


Every Man Needs His Siren

by sunsolace



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Far Harbor, Gothic, MerMay, Mermaids, Mutual Pining, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:54:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsolace/pseuds/sunsolace
Summary: Many things lurk in the waters around the Island. Nate Prescott discovers one of them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It’s Mermay, so have a mermaid AU, featuring copious references to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. What was supposed to be a fun little fic has, like usual, gotten out of hand, so please enjoy these post-apocalyptic mermaids I put too much thought into.
> 
> For reference, this is set a few years before the events of Far Harbor, before the Island has been completely overtaken by the Fog.
> 
> As always, a big thank you to ScorpioSkies for betaing!

  
When Nate Prescott was ten, a sea monster washed to shore at Brooke’s Head. That’s what Anders called it, anyway, before Ma shushed him. More accurately, it was _half_ a monster; a tail and some exposed ribs. Something had shorn its front half clean off.  
  
Little Bobby was hurried away from the sight, but Nate and even Anders were allowed to stay.  
  
Nate had seen beached dolphins before, and this was not it. It had the same rubbery hide, but its coloring was a mottled green and gray with an effervescent sheen. The tail was far too long, resting in serpentine coils on the gravel. Not to mention this thing had what looked suspiciously like a human bellybutton.  
  
Nate’s pa, Heath, ran a hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. “Never seen rads do that to a dolphin before.”  
  
“That’s because it’s not a dolphin,” Ava hissed, her gnarled knuckles tightening on her cane. She stood a few paces away, her milky eyes sliding around the ring of onlookers. The Lesters, Rupert and Ollie, Ma and Pa.  
  
Ma pressed her mouth into a tight line; Nate remembered that years later, looking up at her, her auburn hair glowing against the overcast sky that haloed her. Ma’s tone was quiet, warning, the kind that could make Nate squirm even if he wasn’t in trouble. “Ava—”  
  
Ava smacked her cane on the gravel beach, the sound like thunder echoing around the bay. “You know what it is, Evelyn.”  
  
“You know you’re blind.”  
  
“I can still see well enough, girl.”  
  
Anders then seized the opportunity to weasel between the grownups and poke one of the glowing veins, whipping all the adults into action. Nate joined Leon and Bobby in glaring at Anders while all four boys were shuffled to the house.  
  
The grownups stood on the beach for a long time, the wind shredding their voices. When the sky darkened with dusk, they burned the remains right there on the sand. That night, Nate rested his arms on his bedroom windowsill to watch the silent sea creep up the beach.  
  
In the morning, nothing remained of the monster.  
  
For the next month, Ava put out offerings every day at the small shrine she’d built on the rocks. Ma called her crazy for shuffling across the tidal pools. Ava cussed her out with words Leon refused to explain to Nate, let alone Anders or Bobby.  
  
On day four, the offerings vanished. Ma and Pa agreed the ocean stole them the way they stole the monster’s ashes, but Ava insisted otherwise. The mer, she said, needed to be respected.  
  
Mer. The word made Ma scoff and Pa shrug. Leon, as the oldest and therefore the most responsible, agreed with their parents. Tom Lester showed everyone a dried fin his grandpa took from a mer; the rest of it had been sold to a traveling apothecary to make a cure-all mermaid soup. Cleo’s dad Rupert quietly recounted a tale that his great aunt once saved a mer’s life, and her nets were never empty again.  
  
Nate seized the name, needing a word for what he’d seen that day. He walked along the ribbed sea-sand of the beach at low tide, pausing at the spot where the mer was burned. But the steely blue-gray ocean remained calm. Whatever slept in the water slept quietly.  
  
Then winter hit, and after the thaw came Nate’s eleventh birthday. The mer was forgotten.  
  
Thirteen years later, Nate knew the bay as well as he knew every line in the palm of his hand. There were monsters out there, he was sure, but they were few and far between. Nothing haunted the bay that wasn’t annoyingly mundane, like mirelurks or Ava. Or Anders and Cleo.  
  
Nate didn’t realize why they volunteered for the fishing trip until the Island was a distant gray snake winding along the horizon.  
  
“So,” Anders drawled, “what happened on the rocks?”  
  
“Yeah,” Cleo added. She might’ve only inherited her looks from her dad Rupert, but her eyebrow waggle was all Ollie’s. As a bright-eyed mariner, she was one of the best fishers in the bay—and Nate regretted bringing her along. “Sounds like you two are still… on the rocks, as it were.”  
  
The last thing Nate wanted to think about was Reeve Lester or the rocks. Hence why he’d taken his fishing boat, _Manset_ , out every day for the last fortnight, looking to sea instead of shore. “Yeah, no. We aren’t going there.”  
  
Anders pouted, which only made his scraggly beard look even more ridiculous. “Come on, brother. You know you want to.”  
  
Nate ran a gloved hand along his jaw, feeling the thick salt-damp scruff that offered some protection from the never-ending winds. The water swirled like rippling steel around _Manset_ , reflecting the wan blue-gray sky overhead, and it never looked so inviting. Drowning in icy water felt preferable—or better yet, he could toss his little brother over the side of the boat. Yeah, that sounded like the better option.  
  
Which just left Cleo and her damn smirk. “You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”  
  
“I really won’t—”  
  
Something hit the hull of the boat. Nate rushed to port to see a pale flash of an arm in the tides. A swell lifted it up and away, but he was already scrambling for a life ring.  
  
“Man overboard!”  
  
Anders and Cleo snapped to, but the poor soul had already vanished in the restless depths. Tossing the life ring at Cleo, Nate raced for the wheelhouse. “Find them and yell!”  
  
They scoured the area, but there were only choppy teal-black waters; nothing to mark the spot where Nate had seen the arm.  
  
“Nate.” Cleo stood at the entrance to the wheelhouse, clutching the life ring in her hands. It was still dry. “Whoever that was, we can’t find them. And there’s nothing else out here. They couldn’t have been alive.”  
  
It wouldn’t be the first time they’d found a body in the water. Every fisherman had that kind of story.  
  
Nate grimaced and peered through the windshield. The horizon was steady; blue water under a gray sky. No movement besides the waves and the wind. But the bruised skies along the horizon were getting darker.  
  
“Probably already dead,” Nate agreed, but he saw that white arm lifting from the water in a plea. If that poor bastard had still been alive, they could have been stunned by the impact with the boat and—  
  
“Pull the nets,” Nate said. “We’re racing that storm home.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
While the others obeyed, Nate checked the navigation equipment. The Island slumbered to the west, its gentle contours breaking the otherwise endless horizon.  
  
“Nate.” Anders’ voice was not loud, almost conversational. Stilted. “You need to see this.”  
  
Skin prickling, Nate stepped outside. The nets were splayed along the wet, shining deck, and twisted up in them was a pale figure.  
  
“What,” Anders breathed, “is _that?”_  
  
The body they’d hauled out of the water was the shape of neither man nor beast. Its limp arms flopped out from the netting, dark veins cutting along the insides of its slender wrists. Also trailing from the net was a five foot long tail.  
  
Nate squinted until his vision resolved into something that made sense.  
  
Waist up, it looked like a human woman whose pale hair was twisted up in the netting. Waist down—a serpentine tail. There was no neat split where human ended and creature began—no, dark mottling spread up its stomach to disappear under the sleeveless shirt it wore, the marks reappearing at its shoulders.  
  
Above those shoulders, its head looked unnervingly human. Milky eyes stared sightlessly at the space past Nate’s shoulder. Its mouth was open in a grotesque yawn, leaking water and the salty stench of death.  
  
_Her_ mouth?  
  
Nate remembered the sea monster that washed onto the beach, years ago. The winding tail with its dark mottled coloring, veins slithering up to the midsection where the rest of the body was simply gone. The bellybutton.  
  
This one had a human bellybutton, too.  
  
Cleo shoved her hands in her pockets. “Whatever it is, it was already dead. Whatever got it, got it good.”  
  
On a second look, Nate noticed the deep bloodless gashes clawing across its midsection. Relief bubbled up in him, bursting at once. It had been dead already. He didn’t kill it.  
  
“Whatever killed it,” Nate said, “I think we all know what it is.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Cleo retorted. “Ava’s crazy.”  
  
“You can be crazy and right,” Anders said. He didn’t stop staring. “Just like everyone will think we’re crazy if we tell a story like this with no proof.”  
  
Cleo shifted on her feet, her boots squeaking on the wet deck. “If that’s really… I hear their fins are worth a whole year’s catch. Doesn’t matter if it’s not really what you think it is. Someone will pay for it.”  
  
Its face was as good as a human’s. Human enough that Nate grew unnerved just thinking of using his fillet knife on it.  
  
Pulling his parka tighter around himself, Nate turned back to the wheelhouse. “We’ll worry about it later. We need to get home.”  
  
On the way back, there was motion in Nate’s peripheral. A tail fin cut through the water, a few dozen feet from the boat. A dolphin, probably, though the fluke was unusually big.  
  
Nate peered through the windshield as he reached the helm. The Island sprawled along the horizon like a mother with her arms outstretched, but they were too far away to embrace the safety she offered. Anders and Cleo soon joined him, seeking shelter from the plummeting temperature, and stowed away any loose gear without being asked.  
  
Nate steered _Manset_ toward the southeastern point of the Island. A wind swept across the ocean, stirring up white-tipped waves for his boat to crest, each one an imperfect mountain. But he fought the wind that steered them off-course, grabbing for his lucky compass. The weight of so many Prescott hands throughout history, each one gripping the compass as he did now, sent a familiar chill down his spine.  
  
As Nate raced the salt-sprayed winds, he watched for the fin. Sometimes it was a speck in the sea; sometimes it sliced through the water scant yards away. All too quickly Nate saw that it was entirely wrong for a dolphin fin, not just in size but in color as well.  
  
Soon it was too dim and choppy to make out anything but the towering waves moments before the bow lifted to crest them. The clouds overhead grew fat and bruised with rainwater, and Nate knew they couldn’t outrun the storm. So he slowed down and donned a pair of rubber gloves while Anders and Cleo set up the lightning protection system.  
  
Within minutes the deluge began. Just ten seconds of a barely audible pitter-patter before _Manset_ was hit with a torrent of driving rain. Despite the shelter of the wheelhouse, the wall of sound hit Nate with all the force of the storm itself.  
  
He gritted his teeth and clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled grip. His compass bit into his palm, imprinting its shape into his hand. Cracks of thunder shuddered through the deck, felt more than heard, while the rain drowned out all noise and thought from Nate’s mind. Lines of lightning jumped between the clouds and the water, throwing an unnerving purple glow across the ocean.  
  
Even with the lightning rod, Nate didn’t fancy being hit.  
  
Waves swelled around them with an inhuman power and fury. The Island was lost somewhere on the horizon, beyond their sight let alone their reach. Nate fought to keep _Manset_ angled into the waves and the wind; she topped a crest then pitched forward into a deep trough. Nate overbalanced, clutching at the wheel.  
  
Even before Nate could scowl through the windshield, he could feel that _Manset_ had turned sideways—and it tipped sideways as a wave crested over the deck.  
  
“We’re foundering!” Cleo called.  
  
Before she could continue, Anders broke in with, “I’ll go bail!”  
  
Nate glanced back to see Anders braced against the wall near the door, his expression unusually grim while lightning lit the porthole beside his head. Nate’s chest tightened at the thought of sending his little brother out there, but there was no time for that.  
  
So Nate tossed the only life vest they had at Anders, who caught it on reflex. Then he looked up from the bright orange vest to Nate, the motion a question mark.  
  
“Go on,” Nate barked. “Scream if you fall overboard.”  
  
“Sure,” Anders said faintly.  
  
Cleo took a position at the door to the wheelhouse to watch Anders as he grabbed a bailer and began tossing buckets of water out of the bilge. Nate meanwhile did his best to steer the boat as steadily as he could, avoiding the most massive waves. Which was easier said than done.  
  
“We need another bailer!” Cleo yelled, barely audible above the din. “I’m going out!”  
  
Nate glanced sideways to her. Wild and drenched, her clothes blending into the evening shadows, with her dark blonde hair flying about her head in wet wisps, she looked somehow more and less than human. Despite knowing the strength in her limbs, Nate could only see the mountainous waves battering her body if she fell overboard.  
  
“Take the helm,” Nate barked. “I’ll bail!”  
  
Cleo’s eyes widened further, but she didn’t waste time with questions or protests when Nate stepped away. He lurched for the door as the boat rocked, grabbing at the frame for balance. Squinting into the black rain, he caught the orange motion of Anders half-hunched, scooping water.  
  
Nate stepped into the roar of water. Rain blew almost sideways, cutting like shards of ice, and he was drenched in seconds. Dashes of lightning struck the ocean, illuminating the scene with just enough light to make the evening darker after they vanished. Growls of thunder raced across the water, carried by fierce winds that threatened to pluck Nate from the deck and toss him into the sea.  
  
Planting his feet against another roll, he breathed in as rainwater caught in his eyelashes and rolled down his cheeks. The deck was slick, several inches of water sliding in all directions as the boat heaved. Nate almost lost his purchase bending over to grab a bailer, then he joined Anders scooping water.  
  
Anders didn’t see him until he was scant feet away, then jumped so badly he sloshed water all over the deck. “Nate!”  
  
“Keep working!” he yelled back, but his words were lost in a snarl of thunder.  
  
As Nate bent over, icy water slithered under his collar and down his back like a caress from a corpse. He scooped bucket after bucket of water, but it didn’t feel like he was making a dent. No, it felt like whatever they pitched overboard leaped right back in when the next waves flung thick trails of seaspray.  
  
The tangle of nets at the back of the boat slid back and forth with every rock, loose edges of netting floating in the water. In Nate’s peripheral, it looked like the creature’s white limbs were moving and its tail writhing to escape.  
  
They should never have picked it up, Nate realized. What else could have caused the storm that was halfway to drowning them already?  
  
_Manset_ pitched sideways, sudden and violent, and Nate felt his feet lift from the deck. The wind was cold and so very loud in his ears. In the half-second burn of lightning, he could see everything: his boat tipping dangerously far, Cleo battling the wheel, the whites of Anders’ eyes as he cried out, arm outstretched—  
  
Then the world went dark, and Nate hit the water. It closed over his head, buffeting him in a nauseating swirl that made it impossible to tell up from down, sucking at his clothes. He kicked his legs, but his boots were made from lead and his lungs burned and the water was so very black—  
  
Something flashed in the water, dangerously close—  
  
For one wild moment, he was weightless, so light he thought he’d died and his spirit was free. Then he hit the deck with a loud slap.  
  
“Nate!”  
  
He rolled over, coughing and spluttering as Anders thumped his back. Nate wiped a hand over his face, but it meant nothing with the driving rain stinging his cheeks.  
  
Anders gripped his shoulders, his eyes bright and white-ringed in the gloom. He had to yell to be heard. “Nate! You’re alive!”  
  
Nate sucked in breath after breath as the boat rocked and the rain drummed, and his pulse roared above it all. He grabbed at Anders’ shirt, needing an anchor.  
  
He was still alive.  
  
They were still alive, even if the ocean was trying to kill them.  
  
“Up you get. That’s it.” Anders hauled him to his feet and pushed a bailer into his shaky hands. “We need to keep bailing!”  
  
Every swell the boat hit threatened to pitch him overboard again, filling his vision with black water and the sleek motion of— whatever he saw. The roaring mass of wind and thunder drove them south, past the cape to the rocky isle that the Gott Islands sprouted out of. When Nate swallowed, the droplets gathered on his lips were salty, promising another breath-stealing kiss from the ocean if they couldn’t evade the rocks.  
  
The wind shrieked, its pitch briefly flaring in an odd note. Despite himself, Nate glanced around—and saw a woman clinging to the port side of the boat.  
  
Her mouth moved again, but Nate could scarcely hear her over the elements. Didn’t matter anyway when he rushed to her, grabbing at her arms.  
  
“Get in the boat!”  
  
Nate had no idea where she came from or how she was alive, but there was one rule on the ocean. He managed to get a grip to haul her up, but she shied away—and moments later, he saw why.  
  
Half-out of the water, he saw that she too had a tail.  
  
“What the—”  
  
This close, he could see her eyes were as wild and fearful as his own. She threw out an arm, finger stabbing at something nearby.  
  
“Rope!” she screamed again.  
  
Nate grabbed the mooring rope without thinking and tossed it to her.  
  
Anders all but careened into his side, yelling, “What are you doing? Who is that?”  
  
They looked to the railing, but she was already gone.  
  
Nate flexed his all-but-numb fingers. The ghost of their contact burned. “I think she saved me before, in the water!”  
  
Anders gripped his sleeve. “Hope she’s ready for a repeat performance!”  
  
With dark rain driving into Nate’s eyes, it was hard to see—but. He swore the rope was taut, and the bow cut through the waves with renewed vigor.  
  
“Hey!” Cleo poked her head out from the wheelhouse. “What the hell is going on?!”  
  
Nate and Anders retreated inside with her, bringing puddles in with them, and Nate explained.  
  
Cleo listened with a skeptical expression as she gripped the wheel. “So we’re trusting our lives to a random sea lady? You know how those stories go!”  
  
“If you don’t want to navigate, give me the wheel—”  
  
Cleo swore and scowled. “Look, she’s leading us straight to the rocks!”  
  
The closest landforms were murky shapes in the dark, broken into splinters by slices of rain. Despite rain hammering on the roof of the wheelhouse, Nate heard the dripping of water from his skin, his clothes, counting the seconds until the hull shuddered against the rocks. Anders stood beside him, clutching Nate’s arm either for balance or to keep him steady. Either way, Nate gritted his teeth and prayed for Anders’ sake and Cleo’s, if not his own.  
  
Looking down at his compass, he realized _Manset_ was veering back out to deeper waters.  
  
Cleo lent her weight into the new direction, and the boat coasted over gray crests and shallow troughs. Out the windshield, Great Gott Island crouched above the black water, illuminated in the violet glow of lightning. It was close, but not so near that they risked being impaled on the rocks by the hands of the ocean.  
  
“What the hell…” Cleo breathed, but with more disbelief than outrage.  
  
The hull didn’t scrape a single rock.  
  
With a final, disappointed rumble, it was over. Rain still fell, but it no longer held the storm’s bite. Nothing more than a lingering shower, now. The waves gentled, cradling _Manset_ and licking at the hull with no more than a gentle curiosity as if they weren’t still flecked with foam. _Manset_ continued its arc around the south side of the island, to Little Gott Island, where an old pier extended into the water like an outstretched hand.  
  
Nate crossed the deck to the port bow railing to see the rope was slack. Something moved under the water, a sleek shape, then the woman—the mer—surfaced. The rope was coiled in her arms; as she reached up to return it, Nate could get a better look at her. This mer’s skin was a coppery brown, and he couldn’t distinguish much more than that her hair was dark, molded to her scalp with water.  
  
A mer. An actual, living mer. Nate could hardly breathe in case he scared her away. “I, uh, that is, thank you.”  
  
Their eyes met, and it was like staring into the ocean itself. Saltwater shrouded her, her hair wild and unbound. Her form was sleek and silent, ever-shifting in the swell, and she was at once still and seething as dim light reflected off her skin. Her restless gaze slipped past his shoulder, and she froze. Her face contorted with horror, then rage.  
  
Nate followed her line of sight to the dead mer twisted up in their nets.  
  
Uh oh.  
  
“Wait, I can explain!”  
  
But she was already gone, and the waters were dark.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
Nate turned to his brother. “I don’t—”  
  
Something hit the hull of the boat. Nate’s stomach lurched as he stumbled, lunging for something to hold. He’d almost made it back to the wheelhouse when something struck his boat again.  
  
“What now?” Cleo yelled.  
  
Nate staggered across the deck to the stern of the boat. “The dead mer! She thinks we killed that one!”  
  
“So now she’s going to drown us?!”  
  
Nate’s mouth went dry. With a fisherman for a father, he’d grown up with no shortage of stories about everything that could drown a man. The pier was dozens of feet away, and drifting further as the boat veered off-course. So close, and yet land had never been so far away. If they tried to swim that distance, they would die.  
  
Another strike to the hull, and this time the boat rocked so far he almost saw the waters rushing to greet him again. The mer corpse slid along the deck, limp-limbed and blank-eyed.  
  
Ah hell.  
  
Nate cut through the nets with as precise cuts as he could manage, hoping something of it could be salvaged later. Hoping they’d have a later. When the dead mer was free, he scooped her up in his arms.  
  
He’d carried cold dead fish before, but his skin crawled despite his two jackets separating his skin from hers—her skin which was human and yet not. Her tail spilled out of his grip to the deck, too long for him to maneuver with.  
  
“Anders! Get over here, now.”  
  
“What are we even doing?” But Anders obeyed, scooping up the rest of the tail in his arms.  
  
“If we return the body, maybe she’ll let us go!”  
  
With some huffing, they made it to the railing. The ocean was dark and restless, licking at the hull of the boat. No sign of the mer.  
  
Praying he wasn’t about to be pulled underwater, Nate leaned over the side to deposit the body in the water as gently as he could. It hit the water with a splash and drifted away, head lolling and limbs limp.  
  
Nothing moved below the surface.  
  
“We—” Nate wet his lips. “We didn’t kill her! She’s been dead for some time already!”  
  
Still nothing—until the boat lurched under Nate’s feet. He clutched at the railing as the white corpse drifted away—then realized that was the motor rumbling under his feet. Cleo was still in the wheelhouse, her dark silhouette determined as she closed the gap between them and the pier.  
  
This time, nothing stopped them.  
  
The world was dark and dripping as Nate and Anders stumbled off _Manset_ , weary, and onto the creaky pier. They moored the boat, securing the ropes before Cleo cut the engine. The world bobbed no matter the relatively solid—or at least anchored—planks under Nate’s feet. The sensation was as familiar as ever, but Nate felt his stomach clench for the first time in years.  
  
The pier had only a few rotten timbers, arrowing towards the shore where silhouettes rustled and whispered. Something else rustled, too, if the stories were to be believed.  
  
The pre-war manor atop Little Gott Island was lit. Supposedly that was a good thing, but Nate’s stomach twisted up once more for good measure.  
  
“So…” Anders scuffed his feet on the timber. “Don’t know about the rest of you, but I could spend some quality time with land after that.”  
  
“I’d settle for surviving the night,” Cleo said, peering into the gloom. “You know the stories—”  
  
“We survived the story that actually tried to kill us, so the mildly eccentric story should give us no problems whatsoever.”  
  
Even so, they both looked to Nate for the deciding opinion. Having been the one to invite them both out, Nate was keenly aware their lives were his to protect. He frowned up at the manor again. He’d met Marcus once, years ago, when fishing with his pa. The man just wanted to be left alone with his mirelurks.  
  
A breeze skipped across the bay, and Nate shivered. Despite being the only one to fall overboard, he wasn’t the only one who was drenched to the bone. And the temperature would only continue to drop.  
  
“All right. We’ll knock on the door and hope Marcus doesn’t chase us off his lawn.”  
  
“Or have his mirelurks do it for him,” Cleo grumbled.  
  
As they trumped up the pier, Nate glanced back to the ocean. It was all but still now, as much as it could be, and the white corpse was gone.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to MrNinjaPineapple for letting me borrow Marcus!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta ScorpioSkies!

  
Kaelysi had never been so far inland before. She was a creature of the sea, roaming open waters, haunting the coastline. She wasn’t a mudturner, squirming through the detritus of landwalkers, nor could she survive like a larghan if she were to be beached.  
  
And now, she was lost.  
  
From every direction, the swampland watched her back. Waterways were engorged with floodwater, leaving only small islands and the tips of reeds for her to navigate around. Sickly trees bent their limbs to the water; their braver counterparts lifted them to the sky, and the crisscrossing pattern of gray branches made her think unbidden of a net. Beyond them, not even the sky betrayed a remnant of last night’s storm.  
  
The water rippled with lingering energy, lapping at land, concealing the movements of nearby predators. The currents were too confusing for Kaelysi to follow. Last night’s fog was already burning away, but the fetid smell lingered.  
  
The swamp sang with morning life. Droning insects grated on her ears, drowning out the whisper of the wind. Kaelysi closed her eyes, feeling the breeze on her face, and smelled the ever-present tang of salt.  
  
Nothing told her which way to the ocean.  
  
With the sun touching the top of her head, Kaelysi picked a direction and sank beneath the surface. She didn’t particularly want to stay until nightfall, not if the receding waters could cut off her way to freedom. The water was murky, clouded, and anything but still. She made a series of clicks, detecting shapes in the water around her—rocks and branches and remnants of the old landwalkers. Their strange constructs haunted the Island, like the rusted hulk she swam past, so close she could tell it was red.  
  
Then with a flick of her tail, she dove into deeper waters. The channel was cooler, welcoming her escape from the clinging heat above. With luck, the storm-clouded swamp water would hide her from any surface predators until she made it back to the ocean.  
  
Perhaps she could meet an anguil, but even as she thought it, she knew they would be lurking deep in their dens, away from the burgeoning heat of the day. She stretched out her senses, seeking the presence of any other mer, but she was alone with her thoughts.  
  
Kaelysi surfaced again. The swamp looked different, but nothing had changed. The breeze was cold on her face and stank of salt.  
  
Fixing on the direction of the wind, Kaelysi glided through the canal. It was broad and shallower than she cared for, but at least nothing could lie in wait. Old human constructions loomed on either bank, dark and damp and splintered, and when Kaelysi sank beneath the surface, she saw the red human artifact again.  
  
She was going in circles.  
  
This time Kaelysi took a different turn, and remembered why she had avoided this direction so far: shallow silt flats stretched as far as the eye could see, the slithering gray islands surfacing like the pale bellies of beached whales. Clumps of reeds and debris tangled in the muck while the occasional tree, black and bare-branched, clung to life in the shallows.  
  
All the while, the sun burned her skin as it inched to the sky’s zenith. Kaelysi submerged; she had to sink until her belly brushed the silt floor of the channel before the water was comfortably cool. Then even that relief faded as she slithered between two silt islands and the floodwaters grew shallower still. Following the bend in the waterway, her fluke scraped against the roots of a dead tree.  
  
When Kaelysi next surfaced for air, it was to an endless, humming swamp. Dark shadows of birds soared overhead; their screeching betrayed them as seagulls. One dove to scoop up a struggling fish and sailed away before its fellows shrieked for their share.  
  
Kaelysi shivered.  
  
The channel was a dead end, with a bar of silt and flattened grass separating it from a deeper pond. And beyond that pool, another stretch of swamp.  
  
Kaelysi didn’t need the added air, but she drew in a breath anyway. She swam forward until mud brushed her belly and there was too little water for her tail to maneuver. Grabbing at limp clumps of grass, she looked around for any predators, then heaved herself out of the water.  
  
The mud was thick and slick under the baking sun, sucking at her moist skin as she squirmed her way forward. Her tail was all but useless out of the water, nothing more than dead weight for her to drag. The silt island angled downward, and she followed its course to slide into the pool.  
  
Immediately Kaelysi realized her mistake. Not only was the pool shallower than she’d thought, but the warm, oily water tingled against every inch of her skin. Her eyes and lips stung. Sludge at the bottom billowed, disturbed by her movements.  
  
With three clicks, she sensed the barrels sunken into the pond bed.  
  
Kaelysi surfaced at once, blinking toxic water from her eyes, and sought a way out. The pool was closed off by reeds and mud on all sides, while the strip of land between her and the next waterway was wider than it had seemed before, almost the length of her body. But with her skin prickling, she couldn’t stay put.  
  
A seagull screeched overhead. A shadow crossed the ground just in front of her, followed by the call of some unknown creature echoing through the swamp.  
  
Kaelysi threw herself into the reeds. They scratched at her skin in ten thousand cuts across her arms, her ribs, her hips. The mud against her skin was slimy with algae and whatever poison it had absorbed from the water. She gripped at the reeds but found her momentum stalled, unable to find purchase in the mud.  
  
She was stuck.  
  
Kaelysi lashed her tail again, but only splashed more toxic sludge up her back. Rolling onto her side, she tried to slither forward, gripping at the reeds to pull herself along, but her tail found no purchase. She only succeeded at wedging herself further into the sucking muck, caught by the scratchy stalks. Mud coated her shoulder, the side of her neck, her jaw.  
  
Kaelysi looked down the length of her body, all the way to the tip of her tail that still rested in the brown pond. Sucking in breath after breath, she tried to think. Only no matter how much air she took in—more than she needed, certainly—she still felt sick. Lying back, she watched gray stars flare in the corners of her vision.  
  
If she freed herself from the reeds, perhaps she could shuffle across the mud like a larghan to the next waterway. But the distance was almost the length of her body, and she didn’t have the fins or short tail of a larghan.  
  
But she couldn’t stay put, either.  
  
Kaelysi threw her weight forward. Reeds bent around her as she inched further onto land. But the mud sucked her down as the stalks closed around her with stinging lashes, and then she couldn’t move another inch.  
  
Rolling onto her side, she sucked in short breaths that did nothing for the ache behind her eyes. The world swirled around her even though she knew the land wasn’t supposed to move like the sea.  
  
The swamp stank. Around Kaelysi, mud warmed and even started to dry in places, leaving her skin itchy. Worse, she could feel the poison in the pond seeping into her skin. Her stomach churned and her head ached as the swamp rustled around her; its constant droning was as maddening as the mud she couldn’t scratch off. Worst of all, the sun blazed down on her back.  
  
It struck her, then, that she’d be dead before nightfall.  
  
That electrified her nerves, gifting her with a last burst of strength. Kaelysi thrashed in the reeds, tearing them up by the roots as her tail splashed in the pond—  
  
“What was that?”  
  
Kaelysi froze.  
  
“Don’t know, but it looked big. And angry.”  
  
Oh.  
  
Oh no.  
  
Despite her dry, warm skin, she felt cold.  
  
All Kaelysi could do was lie still and hope they couldn’t find her. But past the swamp’s humming and rustling, she heard them. Squelching steps, the slosh of water. Somewhere behind her, where her tail still rolled out of the reeds and into the pond.  
  
Kaelysi’s heart thrummed in her chest, beating against her ribs for escape. But there was no fleeing now.  
  
A stick snapped nearby, and she hid her face under an arm. The darkness was humid, reflecting the putrid stench of muck and her own fearful breaths back into her face. She felt woozy.  
  
“There, look!”  
  
“What the…”  
  
Kaelysi tried not to twitch.  
  
The sounds of their approach scraped over her skin like the fillet knives they surely carried. When the reeds beside her rustled, she closed her eyes and stopped breathing.  
  
“Oh…”  
  
“Is… is it dead?”  
  
“Hey.” The first voice was closer. Far too close. “Can you hear me?”  
  
Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched.  
  
“She’s alive!”  
  
Kaelysi’s jaw clenched so tight her teeth hurt, but she couldn’t move. Her pulse roared in her ears. Could the human feel her heartbeat?  
  
Fingers curled around her wrist to pull her arm away from her face, and she instinctively resisted before remembering she was supposed to play dead.  
  
But the hand stopped tugging. “It’s okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.”  
  
Kaelysi cracked open an eye to peer past the protection of her arm. A landwalker gazed down at her, half his face covered in auburn scruff. If not for the foreign cut of his shirt or his dry hair, he could have looked like a mer. But perhaps the most glaring difference was the human’s sheer silence. Any mer she could have sensed long before now, sharing emotions and impulses and thoughts. Humans had only a crude language of words.  
  
But even if Kaelysi couldn’t read his face, something seemed familiar about him.  
  
His eyes were almost as wide as hers. “You…”  
  
Oh.  
  
The landwalker she’d rescued scant weeks ago from another hungry storm. How strange he’d be the one to discover her now.  
  
The swamp buzzed in Kaelysi’s ears. Each breath felt loud passing through her ribs. For a moment, the stench around her was overwhelming, then it faded as her eyes slid closed.  
  
Kaelysi felt the fight leave her. She was beached inland, and there was nothing she could do to make the humans free her.  
  
The hand on her arm again. “Hey, are you okay?” Then his voice sounded distant. “She’s burning up. Bobby, help me get her into the water.”  
  
Kaelysi squeaked in surprise as the first human tore at the reeds netting her and hooked his hands under her shoulders. The second human, smaller but unnervingly similar to the first, hesitated before grabbing at her tail. Kaelysi twitched at the rough contact, and he flinched away. If only he knew that she didn’t have the strength to death roll him.  
  
Her eyes slid closed, and she couldn’t open them again.  
  
“C’mon, Bobby,” the first human rumbled. “On three. One, two, three!”  
  
They heaved at the same time. For several dangerous moments, Kaelysi was weightless, skimming across the mud. She’d been lost in currents before, but this was worse, entirely out of the water and at the mercy of these humans. The metallic taste of fear filled her mouth as blood rushed away from her head.  
  
Sloshing, a final heave, then water brushed her back. Her tail slithered through the last of the reeds to fall into the water. The first human dragged her into deeper water, then let her go.  
  
All Kaelysi could do was float. Her eyelids burned red while warm water licked at the corners of her jaw. The swamp held its breath.  
  
Then Kaelysi sank to the bottom. Silt brushed her back, soft and gentle, and she opened her eyes to swirling particles suspended in stained water. Kaelysi stretched her fingers and flicked her tail, relishing the blessed coolness. Her senses detected nothing in the water with her besides the legs of the lingering human. Every instinct burned to swim to safety, away from the landwalkers.  
  
Instead, she surfaced.  
  
The first human stood thigh-deep in the canal, while the other waited out of the water. Both were intent on her. The first, the one she’d rescued that night, looked—relieved?  
  
Kaelysi swallowed. “Thank you.”  
  
While the smaller human blinked, the first nodded. Even if he looked a little shocked. “Consider us even.”  
  
Perhaps he said something else, but Kaelysi drifted, sinking until her ears were full and her tail brushed the bottom of the pool. Her head still spun with roaring blood. Despite the comparatively fresh water, her skin continued prickling.  
  
She half-rolled to douse her face with water and surfaced fully again. The humans’ curiosity hadn’t yet waned as they continued to watch her. She fought a shiver.  
  
“What are you?” The first landwalker asked.  
  
Kaelysi said nothing.  
  
“Sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Never had a chance to talk to a mer before.”  
  
“Your kind doesn’t normally talk when you see one of mine,” Kaelysi said, thinking of Marila tangled in netting, dead on the deck of this very human’s boat. She could guess what they’d planned to do with the body. Humans were predictable that way.  
  
“Yours don’t talk, either.”  
  
“Not with those we don’t know.”  
  
While the first human frowned in thought, the second frowned for an entirely different reason. “You wear clothes? Why?”  
  
“Why do you wear clothes?” Kaelysi retorted.  
  
The human’s brow furrowed. While he was thinking, Kaelysi looked herself over. Though the night, she’d lost two tail bags, her speargun and all the spears in her quiver. Her shirt and tail wrap were streaked with dark mud, but that wasn’t much of a loss when they were old and dull anyway.  
  
“But we wear clothes to protect against the elements. And because I don’t ever want to see my brothers’ junk swinging in the breeze. You’re an ani…”  
  
“A what?”  
  
The human opened his mouth, paused, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Nevermind.”  
  
The first human chuckled once. “You’ve been taking lessons from Anders on how to talk to women.”  
  
The smaller one grumbled something and made a hand gesture that was probably rude, based on the first human’s laugh. If not for their legs, they almost reminded her of larghan pups squabbling on the sand.  
  
The first turned back to her. “Before we get off on the wrong foot, I’m Nate. This is my brother Bobby.” He gestured to the smaller human, who nodded uneasily. “Do you have a name?”  
  
“Yes,” she answered.  
  
Bobby scoffed. “Leave it, Nate. We have to find Leon already.”  
  
Nate’s expression clouded, but he set his jaw. “Five minutes can’t hurt.”  
  
Bobby grimaced and turned away, to the rowboat perched against the silt bar. “You don’t know that.”  
  
Nate crouched by the edge of the water, and Kaelysi didn’t resist the gentle current that dragged her towards him. He didn’t take his eyes off her. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen our brother? He went into the swamp a few days ago and never came home.”  
  
Kaelysi shook her head. “I haven’t seen anyone.”  
  
Nate’s exhale was hard and rough. He looked down at the water’s edge. “Right. What are you doing this far inland, anyway?”  
  
Kaelysi hesitated, then said, “I was swept in by the storm. Now I need to find my way back.”  
  
“Well, you’re, uh, going the wrong way. The ocean is that way.” He pointed to a dense copse of trees back the way she came.  
  
Kaelysi covered her face with both hands, fighting off a scream.  
  
She was never going to escape this place, not on her own. Which was why she found herself eyeing up the landwalkers. “You’re searching for your brother, yes? I’ll help your search if you guide me to open water. A fair bargain.”  
  
“How can you help, anyway?” Bobby asked.  
  
“If his body is caught underwater, I can find it.”  
  
Both landwalkers looked queasy at the thought. Human though they might be, she could understand their fear when she’d discovered the bodies of too many friends over the years. Marila’s loss still hurt like an angler was clawing at her breastbone.  
  
There were too few of her people left.  
  
Nate’s mouth thinned, but he nodded. “All right. Can we go, or do you need a few more minutes?”  
  
“I’m well enough,” Kaelysi lied, mostly because Bobby was bouncing on his feet and she knew from living with larghan what that meant.  
  
They set off. Nate had to help her over another sandbar, then she was in deeper water at last. Kaelysi sank into the murky depths, her senses alert for anything lurking nearby. Another series of clicks told her that tree trunks sprouted from the mud, catching debris that piled between them. Kaelysi steered clear. The occasional branch floated by, each one sending her senses haywire at the prospect of something moving in the water with her.  
  
As promised, Kaelysi followed the shadow of the rowboat. She surfaced after only a few minutes to reassure the landwalkers that she was indeed upholding her end of the bargain. Rolling onto her back, she glided beside the boat, out of range of the oars, just long enough for them to see her.  
  
As she descended again, she wondered if they planned on leading her back to the ocean. How simple would it be to instead lure her to their settlement and net her?  
  
Still, a mer didn’t break her oaths. Kaelysi only hoped she wouldn’t regret this one.  
  
The rowboat suddenly changed direction, and Kaelysi surfaced to find Bobby sloshing towards an islet while Nate held both oars. Bobby scuffed a foot over blackened earth before bounding to the base of the islet’s lonely tree. He climbed it with confounding ease while Kaelysi watched.  
  
Humans.  
  
When she looked to the higher branches, she noticed a pack settled in a crook of the trunk. Bobby squeezed himself into the vee and dug through the bag.  
  
He whooped. “It’s Leon’s! He’s got that stupid pet rock in here!”  
  
Nate also cheered, and Kaelysi fought the urge to dive underwater to escape their commotion. “Any sign of where he went?”  
  
“No, but everything’s damp! I think it’s been here a while.”  
  
Kaelysi watched Nate close his eyes, brow furrowing, before he scanned the swamp around them. Bobby dropped from the tree and clambered back into the rowboat, then they were off.  
  
Kaelysi wondered if anyone was looking for her, too. Two days wouldn’t usually be long enough to spark alarm, but with Marila’s recent death, the colony was on edge. Maybe Kaelysi’s pod was already on the lookout, with Noreal and Kamer scouring the rocks while Juliri and Skyleros searched deeper waters. Reneam and Najiel would have to stay behind to guard their pups.  
  
While the humans scoured the surface for the tracks of a living brother, Kaelysi searched where the currents would take something that fell out of the tree and died. The waters were full—of branches and leaves, bones and debris—but otherwise silent. She found a drowned gulper and what Noreal once claimed was something called a wolf, with shaggy dark fur and big ears.  
  
She surfaced twice more for air, then on her next descent, her senses warned her of something nearby. As she approached the tangled mass, she got close enough to see a flash of something pale. A limb.  
  
The body was caught in the loop of an exposed tree root. It almost looked like it was floating, arms bobbing in the current. Clothes and hair billowing.  
  
Ah.  
  
He almost looked like a mer, and her chest constricted.  
  
Kaelysi tugged, but the body had swelled until its legs were stuck fast in the root. The water was too murky to see through, so she felt around its feet with her hands. With some effort, she undid the laces on its boots and pushed its feet with all her strength. Then when she swam up to hook her arms under its shoulders, it came free.  
  
With a few strokes of her tail, she dragged the body to the surface. She scanned the water for the rowboat, finding it near a cluster of reeds. Nate glanced in her direction—and even with the distance between them, she saw the whites of his eyes.  
  
Kaelysi gently pushed the body to the rowboat and turned it over, so its face was visible.  
  
“Is this your brother?”  
  
Both humans peered down, dread in their eyes. That fear then turned to relief.  
  
“No,” Nate breathed. “That’s not him.”  
  
Bobby scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, but it’s someone else’s family. What… what do we do?”  
  
Nate’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “Let’s see if we can figure out who it is.”  
  
Kaelysi nudged the body to keep it from drifting too far away. Its shirt billowed, exposing thick scars under the unbuttoned collar. When Kaelysi checked its arms, they were likewise scarred, and two fingers were missing from its left hand.  
  
“So,” Nate said. “A fisherman or a hunter.”  
  
He dug through the body’s pockets and belt pouches; all that remained were a coil of wire and small bones. Nate unsheathed its knife, flashing silver—  
  
Kaelysi flitted out of range. His gaze darted from the blade to her, brows pulled together in a frown.  
  
“It’s okay,” he said. “I just want to take a look at it.”  
  
And he did while Kaelysi waited at a safe distance.  
  
Nate whistled as he turned the rusted and chipped knife over in his hands. “Someone has not taken care of this.” He scratched at one of the dark spots and flecks of brown stained his finger.  
  
“Is that rust or blood?” Bobby asked.  
  
Nate frowned down at the corpse. “I think that’s a trapper.”  
  
“No way,” Bobby said, but he peered at it with a renewed interest. “They don’t come this far south.”  
  
“Well, this one did.” Nate drew back his arm, then the knife spun end over end through the air. Kaelysi watched it plunk into the water and vanish. When she glanced back to Nate, he was pushing the body away with an oar.  
  
“Nothing we can do now,” he said. “Let’s get going.”  
  
By mid-afternoon, lazy white clouds were rolling overhead. Nate navigated to the largest pockets of water for her sake, but Kaelysi could tell they were going further inland. The water tasted more brackish than salty, with a stagnant tang that lingered on her lips.  
  
When she surfaced, the trees morphed from weeping swamp-dwellers to tall, dark boughs that dropped the cones Noreal liked. Many of those trees were stunted, angling in odd directions, and one even grew in a loop with spiny branches that made her think of an armored anguil. Despite the heat of the day, a translucent fog danced between the trunks.  
  
She didn’t like the smell of the place.  
  
“Do you really think he came this far north?” Bobby asked quietly.  
  
Nate grimaced. “Can’t hurt to look.”  
  
Kaelysi filled her lungs with the foul air and descended to safety. She suspected she knew where they were. Underwater, she watched the shadow of the boat until it slowed in a shallow waterway.  
  
She surfaced to find them staring at a shrine where a tidal hunter had been crucified.  
  
It almost looked like a mer. Its fluke slashed vertically like a shark’s, drooping against the base of the shrine. Its clawed hands had been nailed to the wooden board, exposing gills gaping along its ribs. Its misshapen head lolled, mouth open, revealing two rows of sharp teeth.  
  
The tidal hunter had been submerged into the Glow until its skin had burned and its veins were lit like fire.  
  
Nate blinked. “What the…”  
  
Bobby was the first to glance down at her. His expression was soft and sorrowful. “Hey… I’m sorry about this other mer.”  
  
She shook her head. “That’s not a mer.”  
  
Both humans stared at her.  
  
“What do you mean,” Nate asked, his voice stilted, “that’s not a mer?”  
  
“It’s a tidal hunter. I don’t know how they caught it. Hunters prefer the open ocean.” She shivered, thinking of the endless span of water and the relentless pursuit. But despite the scars on her back—the scars that many mer carried—she didn’t know if she could look at the crucified creature and say it deserved a death like that.  
  
“They’ll attack anything they see,” she added since the landwalkers still looked mournful.  
  
“Right,” Nate said, but his voice sounded strained. Then he glanced down at her. “Do they attack mer?”  
  
The old scars tingled. “Yes.”  
  
His expression tightened. “Right. We should, uh, move on, then.”  
  
“I can’t be seen by the Atomites,” Kaelysi said softly. She tilted her chin at the shrine. “Or they’ll do that to me, too.”  
  
Nate tightened his grip on his oar. “That’s not happening. I promise.”  
  
Kaelysi never put much stock in human oaths, but his eyes were fixed on her, clear and steady. The marsh grew quiet around them. It was only after he glanced away that she realized his eyes were green. Greener than the ocean on an overcast day and brighter than fire.  
  
She took care as they glided through the network of riverways, sinking deeper into the sick land of the Atomites. Kaelysi only surfaced when she needed air, just enough to expose her nose, and stayed behind the rowboat.  
  
Then the rowboat suddenly turned overhead, the oars hitting the water with more energy. Kaelysi surfaced in its white-frothed wake to see them paddling towards a quartet of robed humans on the shore. Despite the sunshine, a translucent fog fluttered around them.  
  
Kaelysi sank at once, praying the Atomites’ attention was on the pair of landwalkers instead. When the rowboat stopped, she carefully surfaced behind it, just enough to expose her ears.  
  
Bobby was yelling, “Leon, you’re alive!”  
  
Nate added, “We’ve been looking all over for you!”  
  
A third voice, but a woman’s: “Not a step further, outsiders! This land is not for you.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Zealot, if I may?” A masculine voice. “I’m grateful you searched for me, but you should’ve stayed home.”  
  
Bobby said, “Like hell I’m going to sit by when my brother’s missing.”  
  
Nate, however, was quieter. “Leon, what’s going on? Why are you dressed like that?”  
  
“I—” A long pause. Then, with a strange lilt: “I’ve found my true family. They took me in during the storm and showed me Atom’s glory.”  
  
“C’mon, Leon, you don’t really believe— all that?”  
  
The click of a weapon was loud across the water, echoing between the slanted trees. “Enough! This one has found the true path and you cannot take him from it. Begone, or we will make you go.”  
  
“Leon, please…”  
  
“You should do as she says. Don’t worry about me.”  
  
At the sound of footsteps, Kaelysi sank to the bottom and swam ahead. A few minutes later, when the rowboat didn’t follow, she circled back in case the humans had taken another route through the waterways. But no, they were paddling slowly. The ripples themselves were sluggish and somber.  
  
When they were a safe distance from the Atomites, Kaelysi surfaced. The landwalkers were silent, slumped, sober, and looked anywhere but each other. Or her.  
  
She rested her hand on the side of the rowboat, curling her fingers over the lip. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Not your fault,” Nate said roughly. “Leon… He made his choice. Now, we said we’d get you home.”  
  
The sun was touching the top of the trees. By the time they’d paddled to the mouth of the estuary, it had been swallowed by the Island. The sky was softening to gray, and already more clouds were gathering on the horizon.  
  
Kaelysi’s return to the ocean should have been triumphant, but she felt only a tired sadness for the events of the day. She should have called their bargain fulfilled and made an escape, but Kaelysi followed the rowboat down the coast to the southern bay where the strange tower shone a beam of light at night.  
  
Humans were so fragile on the sea, and they’d lost one of their pod already.  
  
Still, she wasn’t so foolish to surface once they entered the bay, lest another human spy her. When she sensed the legs of a pier nearby, she rose as close to the surface as she dared. Maybe the humans saw her, maybe they didn’t. But it was the only goodbye she could spare before diving to safer depths and swimming away.  
  
And yet, she lingered.  
  
Even after a decent hunt, Kaelysi didn’t feel ready to make the journey back to the colony. Not with the lingering poison in her skin. So she haunted the waters around Marcus’s island for another two days, toying with the runt of his latest hatchlings when he wasn’t looking.  
  
But she found herself heading north more than once to the coast of the Island. She knew the human habitats that perched on beaches and riverways, and how to navigate by them without surfacing for air. This time was no different, of course. But she swam north, to the light tower and further north still, to the mouth of the estuary. Hunting was easy in the shallows, even if debris from the receding floodwaters still tumbled into the ocean.  
  
One such piece of debris caught Kaelysi’s attention. It was large, rectangular, casting a shadow on the sea bed. Water rippled around it—from a paddle, she realized. Kaelysi had seen the underside of every boat humans had made. This was not one of them. She surfaced a safe distance behind it to watch.  
  
Between gray skies and grayer waters, a flash of red caught her eye. Hair, almost as red as Juliri’s tail. The human was hunched over their makeshift raft, fighting the current that wanted to sweep them out to sea, until their body gave out and they slumped. The paddle drifted away, beyond reach in mere moments.  
  
Some sea deaths were short, sudden. Others were slow. Kaelysi knew she was watching one such death in progress.  
  
She sighed and swam for the raft.  
  
Kaelysi was careful, as always, surfacing at first out of the human’s line of sight. This close, his dirty rags sent a chill through her—and she had to fight her first instinct to capsize the Atomite’s raft.  
  
But under the smeared face paint, his pale skin was tinged green. Kaelysi wasn’t sure humans were supposed to look like that. His eyes were closed and his mouth moved silently. And something was haunting about his face. Something familiar.  
  
“Leon?” she ventured.  
  
His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t respond. The color of his eyes was answer enough.  
  
Kaelysi stole the hemp rope belt from his waist, and he didn’t even notice. She found somewhere to affix it to the raft and towed it south.  
  
When they reached the bay, she sank as deep into the water as she could without capsizing the raft. Despite spending two days lurking near the bay, her heart thrummed in her chest, and her senses stretched in every direction, for all the good it would do. The only danger would come from above, this deep in human territory.  
  
She sensed the foundations of the longest pier long before she saw them in the green-gray. That would do. She tied her end of the rope around the mooring and dove, letting her fluke breach the surface. Risky, but she had to attract their attention somehow.  
  
Even so, she’d risked enough around humans lately, so she swam out to the open sea where she belonged.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted [some designs for Kaelysi](https://eluvisen.tumblr.com/post/184709041666/designs-for-kaelysi-from-the-mermaid-au-click-for) on tumblr, if you're interested!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken some liberties with the settlements around the Island and referenced some locations that exist on Mt Desert Island (and its surrounding islands) but aren't shown in Far Harbor.
> 
> Many thanks to ScorpioSkies for betaing and MrNinjaPineapple for his input!

  
Nobody believed that Nate had seen any mer, of course. Or that all of his brothers had, too—especially Leon, even though his description of a sea woman in his fever dreams lined up a little too well with a certain mer Nate now knew.  
  
Ava was the only exception. Nate used to listen to her stories as a kid, but they’d just been stories. Words to warm the air in winter and chase the hunger from their bellies in a bad year. Now she was the one to listen, and believe in a way that he never had.  
  
“Bargains,” Ava said. She shifted the necklaces on her chest—one with beads carved from wood, another of braided threads, and a third a chain with a carved bone pendant. “Mer love bargains. Deal fairly with one, and they’ll deal with you.”  
  
Nate hefted the basket of offerings he carried. “That’s what this is for?”  
  
Ava smiled, and it wasn’t pretty. “When you live by the ocean, you want it on your side.”  
  
Nate thought again of the storm waters that had sucked him down, down, until Kaelysi saved him.  
  
Friendly mer would make a mighty good luck talisman, he couldn’t lie. As he followed Ava onto the rocks, he had to wonder why Kaelysi saved him the first time.  
  
Nate offered an arm to Ava, and she curled her gnarled fingers around the crook of his elbow. While the tide was low, the rocks were never dry. Not when waves lunged for them, spraying white foam in all directions. Or when tidal pools lurked in the valleys between the stones, trapping algae and fish on land.  
  
Ava had memorized her route to the shrine after so many years, tapping the ground in front of her with her cane. Despite walking right beside her, Nate had no idea how she managed alone.  
  
Especially not when he stepped in two rock pools himself. Ava’s snickers were caught by the wind and carried out to sea.  
  
Nate hadn’t been out to the rocks since that last talk with Reeve, and his gut clenched. They’d only gone a dozen feet out to the water’s edge, where the beach curved nearby and the water was shallow. When Nate passed the spot now, he clenched his jaw and looked away.  
  
Ava’s shrine was all the way out at the edge of the rocks, where the water churned in continuous motion and it was easy to forget there was land nearby. Nate almost felt the stone rock beneath him as if they were bobbing on the surface.  
  
Today the ocean was a restless green, tipped with white where the winds lashed it, while the gray skies spanned from horizon to horizon like a patchwork of dull cotton. The sea’s constant rhythm was mesmerizing, no matter how familiar Nate was with these waters.  
  
The shrine itself was simple, only a carved circle on a raised section of rock. Ava dropped the pillow she carried beside the ring so she could kneel down, then gestured for Nate to pass the basket. He made sure she had a good grip before letting go. Ava arranged her collection of offerings—a painted mirelurk egg, a bowl of mutfruit, and a pair of gold earrings.  
  
While she was busy, Nate watched the ocean.  
  
Reeve always said he looked seaward too often. Nate was starting to think he was right, and yet he couldn’t look away. It was the same ocean he had been born beside, and to this day it was as alien as it was familiar, ever-shifting in the swell, its color and temperament different every day. Indomitable and furious, stretching to the end of the sky and beyond, the sea could bring any man to his knees.  
  
Nate was starting to feel like there were more things in the depths of the ocean than he could ever know.  
  
He found himself tracing his lucky compass through his jacket. Ma had given it to him when he was eleven, on his first big fishing trip with Pa. Every sailor needed a piece of home to guide him back to shore, she’d said. Since his tumble into the ocean, he’d taken to keeping it on him at all times.  
  
Beside him, Ava made a noise and fumbled for her cane. Nate helped her back to her feet; before he could grab her pillow, she hooked her cane through a loop sewn into the side of the cushion and lifted it herself.  
  
“Ava,” he asked, “how do you know the mer are taking your offerings?”  
  
He’d asked before—everyone had—but never honestly.  
  
Ava sensed the difference. Her milky blue eyes focused on the space beside his right ear. “How do you think four families have survived together? Where else on the Island do you see that?”  
  
“But we all have our own land,” Nate said. “We’re just all in the bay.” It took ten minutes from Reeve in the lighthouse to the Prescott home on top of the cliffs, then another three to reach Rupert and Ollie, then Ava’s lonely little shack hunkered on the north shore.  
  
The only other place he could think of like Brooke’s Head were the sister colonies at the Narrows. On either side of the narrow, shacks were packed side by side on top of the water, creeping up to the shore. Nate didn’t know how people could live on top of each other like that.  
  
Ava hummed. “Most folks think it is better to die alone than live together in case someone steals your catch. But we’ve endured.”  
  
Fingering the compass in his pocket, he wondered how much Ava really knew.  


—  


The last weeks of August were quiet. Routine. Nate made the most of the warm weather while it lasted, taking his boat and his brothers out to fish; by some miracle things still stayed quiet.  
  
And not just because Leon wasn’t talking much, huddled against the railing with three blankets and a bucket. He refused to be left behind, claiming he was just riding out the last of the rad poisoning, but they all knew he’d be green around the gills regardless.  
  
Nate still didn’t know how Leon had tricked the Children of Atom and escaped their clutches.  
  
When Eli’s caravan was late, Nate sailed north to Mariner’s Dock at Far Harbor to trade for some Radaway. The northern peninsula was unusually foggy; even from the _Manset_ , the pearly mist was unmissable as it swallowed the bones of the nearby pre-war town. The Mariner wrangled two nets out of Nate in return, which kept him on land for another week as he and Ma repaired the trawl he’d cut through to free the dead mer. It felt like another lifetime, the first time he’d laid eyes on her.  
  
On day three, Nate sat by the sea-facing back porch with the trawl laid out before him, when there was motion in his peripheral. He glanced to his right, in the direction of the lighthouse, to discover the last person he wanted to see.  
  
“I was wondering what could keep you on land,” Reeve said. He gestured to the trawl. “Guess I know now.”  
  
Nate’s mouth opened and closed. They hadn’t really spent any time together since breaking up, and he found himself drinking in the sight of Reeve now. He looked unusually scruffy with his dark hair mussed, presumably from the wind, along with a five o’clock shadow that couldn’t have possibly been made by a persistent breeze. His hunter’s rangy build was hidden beneath a green parka, but Nate knew Reeve’s lean, muscled figure all too well. A rifle slung over his shoulder spoke of an imminent trip into the woods. But his dark, alert gaze was belied by the rings under his eyes.  
  
Nate may as well have drunk sea water.  
  
He found himself both concerned and irritated. Reeve was the one who called things off, so it was his own damn fault for looking rough. Either way, it wasn’t Nate’s business anymore.  
  
He swallowed and looked away. “Sure.”  
  
“Nate—”  
  
What he wanted to say was, _I miss you_. Instead, he said, “I’ve gotta get this finished.”  
  
Reeve cleared his throat. “Sure,” he echoed.  
  
When Nate next glanced up, Reeve was gone as if he’d never been. The distant lighthouse filled the space where his silhouette had been, and Nate’s gut twisted when his gaze landed on the lantern room. Bad idea to think of all the ways they used to fool around up there, but Nate couldn’t help himself.  
  
With a growl, he bent over the net and double checked every knot.  
  
All the while, something niggled at the back of Nate’s mind. The water itself seemed quiet. Too quiet, when Cleo and Reeve went on a mirelurk hunt only to find that the nests had been destroyed at Lopaus Point, Bennet Cove, and even Sutton Island.  
  
And then a few days later, a clutch of mirelurk eggs appeared on each of the jetties in Brooke’s Head.  
  
“What on earth?” Cleo squawked in greeting as soon as she and her dads got within Nate’s hearing range. All four households gathered on the beach to scratch their heads. “You got them too?”  
  
“Who’d just… dump a whole lot of eggs and go?” Anders asked.  
  
“Whoever cleaned out all the mirelurk nests in the area,” Reeve answered.  
  
Ava just smiled to herself and counted her eggs.  
  
“Best not to think too hard about it,” Nate’s pa said. “Wasn’t an accident, so no point letting good food go to waste.”  
  
“Still, we should thank whoever decided to share,” Ma answered. “Leon, take your brothers and see if we need to thank any of the nearby homesteads.”  
  
While it was Nate’s boat, Leon didn’t hesitate to boss his brothers around as they set sail for Haddock Cove. Meanwhile, Cleo, Rupert and Ollie took their boat north to Southwest Harbor. Their boat was a dark gray shape in the distance before it rounded the cape and there was only the ocean.  
  
The Husky boys at Haddock Cove didn’t know anything of the eggs, nor did Angie’s cooperative at Cranberry Island, so the folk of Brooke’s Head were all forced to shrug and complain about the mystery over dinner.  
  
Except there was one more Harborman to ask.  
  
Cleo joined Nate after all of his brothers bailed, and they spent the trip to Little Gott Island complaining about his cowardly blood relations. Past the arch of Great Gott Island, the dark rock of Little Gott Island jutted out of the water. Bare-branched pines leaned in all directions, struggling against the coastal gale that made them shudder and sway. Nate squinted through the windshield, easing off the throttle. A knot of algae-stained boulders meandered along a gray stretch of beach, and his gut clenched. Even from this distance, some of the mirelurks sported unusual colors, from a near-black crab to one with mottled blue patterning.  
  
Thankful that the pier was further south, Nate gave the mirelurks a wide berth and kept an eye on the water for the spiny fins of a king. Cleo also kept a lookout, when she wasn’t rifling through the basket that Ava had insisted they give Marcus.  
  
“Jar of pine nuts, tea, sewing kit, a box of .50 cal rounds, a pair of trousers… are we sure this isn’t an offering?” Cleo asked. “Are we sure Marcus isn’t a mer?”  
  
Nate chuckled once. “She does know how to keep mysterious sea monsters from eating us.”  
  
“He isn’t that bad.” Cleo rolled her eyes. “There’s also a stack of letters in here… nope, not touching those. Ava will know. Somehow.”  
  
It was mid-morning by the time they’d moored _Manset_ at the lonely pier. In the daytime, it looked no less ominous with its moldy, rotten boards that dared the unwary to step on them. Nate wondered if the pier was poorly maintained to ward off visitors. Particularly when Marcus’s own boat bobbed in the distant shallows, and a rowboat was beached on the gray shore.  
  
Still, neither Nate or Cleo wanted to risk wading to shore. Thick rugs of seaweed clumped in the water beneath them; at best it would get in their underwear, and at worst it would tangle them up like a net. Or they'd step on a hiding mirelurk. But they made it to solid ground without breaking any ankles, then stopped to take their bearings. Sparse woodlands and tough coastal shrubbery all but concealed a meandering path to the pre-war manor nestled at the heart of the island.  
  
Nate squinted at a boulder that looked suspiciously like a sleeping mirelurk and rested a hand on his belt, near his pistol.  
  
The winding path didn’t feel familiar despite—or perhaps because of—their nighttime visit. Cleo, however, felt emboldened to take the lead, although Nate didn’t miss the stiffness of her spine. He quickened his pace to walk beside her, and somehow they didn’t see a single mirelurk.  
  
Nate wasn’t complaining, mind.  
  
The house perched on a cliff over the ocean, with peeling white paint that exposed the dead gray timber beneath. Sheets of plywood bandaged holes in the walls and ceilings, chronicling the injuries of a house that had withstood the Great War. Every window was shuttered, and the lantern that hung by the front door was extinguished, rocking gently in the breeze. The lighthouse beside it was dark and silent, nothing more than a dead candle.  
  
Squaring her shoulders, Cleo marched up to the front door and knocked.  
  
The lantern creaked as it swung back and forth, reflecting a dark shadowed woodland in its cloudy glass.  
  
Gravel shifted behind them.  
  
They both whirled to see a lumbering shape push aside a shrub—and stop dead when it saw them.  
  
Marcus scowled. “What are you doing on my lawn?”  
  
Like most Harborfolk, Marcus looked like he’d been chewed up by the Island, but it had found him too tough to digest. His face was tanned and wrinkled, but not unhandsome even if he bore the marks of hard drinking. His dark hair, laced with silver, flopped over his temples in scruffy locks. What set Marcus apart from other Harborfolk was that the aroma of mirelurk outweighed the whiskey.  
  
His thick eyebrows were still furrowed, so Nate cleared his throat and held up the basket. “First of all, Ava wanted us to give you this.”  
  
Marcus raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Still kicking, is she? Give it here.”  
  
While Marcus rifled through the basket, Nate supposed it was no surprise they knew each other when they were two grumpy peas in a pod.  
  
Suddenly Marcus froze and looked up. “You said _firstly_. There’s something else you want?”  
  
Cleo glanced to Nate, her expression making it clear that he was on his own.  
  
Nate answered, “Someone gifted every family in Brooke’s Head with mirelurk eggs, and we were wondering if it was you?”  
  
Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I give away my eggs?”  
  
Under the heat of his gaze, Nate shifted on his feet. “Don’t know, only that someone did. We’re just trying to find out who.”  
  
Marcus’s expression didn’t clear up. If anything, he looked more suspicious. “If anyone has stolen my mirelurks, they’ll have to explain themselves to Glenda.”  
  
Nate and Cleo shared a confused look. Marcus lived alone, minus the mirelurks.  
  
Before either of them could weigh up the pros and cons of pointing this out, Marcus stabbed a finger at them. “Maybe you’re the one who stole a clutch, and you’re trying to throw me off the scent!”  
  
Nate raised his hands. “We didn’t steal anything! Someone wiped out all the nearby mirelurk colonies and then eggs turned up at our doorstep!”  
  
“What did the eggs look like?”  
  
Nate raised an eyebrow. “Uh, like mirelurk eggs? Big and gray?”  
  
“Any unusual marks or colors?”  
  
“No?”  
  
Marcus hooked his thumbs through his belt. “Hmph. Maybe they’re not mine, then. I paint a green circle on all my eggs, so I know they’re mine.”  
  
“We didn’t see any marks on the eggs,” Cleo said.  
  
“I’ll have to count the clutches, just in case…” Marcus muttered, more to himself than them. “If those blasted mer have stolen my mirelurks again…” But his expression belied his tone, looking more amused than anything else.  
  
Now that was interesting. Maybe it hadn’t been a coincidence that the mer had towed _Manset_ to Little Gott Island, after all.  
  
Cleo, however, was thinking in a different direction. “If they’re not yours, any idea who it was, then?”  
  
“Whoever took out the nests,” Marcus said. “Don’t look at me, I don’t hunt mirelurks. But,” he continued, “if you raise the hatchlings, they’ll make wonderfully loyal companions. Even help fight off anything that wants to take a chunk out of you.”  
  
Nate and Cleo glanced at each other again.  
  
“Good to know,” Nate said, neglecting to mention that what eggs hadn’t already been cooked were sitting inside iceboxes. He shifted on his feet. “Earlier you said that mer, uh, borrow your ‘lurks without permission?”  
  
Marcus snorted. “Polite way of putting it. What of it, boy? You think you’ve seen mer about?”  
  
“Well, yeah, actually.”  
  
Marcus blinked. “You don’t look like their type.”  
  
Nate felt a stab of offense at that.  
  
“And who is their type?” Cleo jumped in before Nate could retort. “Grumpy old men?”  
  
Marcus subsided somewhat, scratching his beard. “Which ones did you see?”  
  
“Just one,” Nate answered, and didn’t fail to notice that any softness shadowing Marcus’s face vanished when he looked back to Nate. “But she has long dark hair, brown skin, a dark teal tail, hazel eyes…”  
  
“Ah,” Marcus said, “Kaelysi... Yeah, she’s a good one. It was probably her, then. Now scoot. I have hatchlings to feed.”  
  
Without a further word, Marcus ambled away.  


—  


So, their mysterious benefactor was a mer. Probably. Nate wondered why Kaelysi—if it was indeed her—had decided to help, and why now. The eggs were, thankfully, not poisoned. Nate was doubly glad of that fact when Anders and Bobby had a competition to see who could cook and eat a whole egg the fastest.  
  
While they were cleaning up their mess under Ma’s watchful eye, Nate meandered down the cliffs to the family pier to watch dusk leach the daylight from the land. The sun was setting behind him, sinking behind the Island’s spiny back, and cast long lines of hazy light through the trees. _Manset_ bobbed by the pier alongside two rowboats.  
  
Nate kicked his feet together and sank deeper into his parka. The timber boards beneath him were moist and algae-slick, creaking every time he moved. Nate shifted so close to the edge that he risked falling if the board gave out beneath him. With all his brothers in the house, he needed the chance to think alone.  
  
There was a face in the water below him.  
  
Nate jolted—and with his already precarious perch, he fell. The first icy contact was a punch to his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs. He plunged below the surface and the vast blue surrounded him, cradled him, sucked him further down into its endless embrace.  
  
And then she appeared before him, hair wild and tail coiled, and he was shooting upward through a curtain of silver bubbles. Breaking the surface, Nate gasped for air. He kicked his feet to tread water, but it felt all too easy despite his waterlogged boots.  
  
Maybe because Kaelysi held him above water, her eyes wide. “Are you hurt? Are you drowning?”  
  
They were so close Nate could see flecks of brown and green in her eyes, and count every droplet caught in her lashes. When she spoke, he could see fleshy gunk caught between her teeth, and the pungent aroma of raw fish spread over him.  
  
His heart beat wildly in his chest. “No. Just startled.” Because he could help himself, he added, “We have to stop meeting like this.”  
  
“You shouldn’t fall in the water,” she retorted, almost chiding.  
  
“I _can_ swim, you know.” He twisted to reach for the pier behind him, seeking the ladder to haul himself back up. Kaelysi grumbled something as he did; all he caught was ‘humans’ and ‘no tail’.  
  
As Nate clambered back up, sopping wet, he glanced around for anyone else. Dead ahead, above the winding path on the cliffs, he could see movement in the windows of his family home. The bay stretched to his right, the sands silent but for the gentle wash of the tides. Cleo’s boat was missing in the next pier over. Nate risked a glance to the left, where the lighthouse perched on the cliffs, but there was no movement around it.  
  
By the time Nate was seated again, he half expected Kaelysi to be gone. But she was still there, bobbing in the swell. She’d sunk down to her chin, leaving her tail an indistinct shimmering teal under the surface. If he hadn’t been raised on stories of dangerous sea women, he’d have said she looked like any other swimmer.  
  
And yet her gaze was uneasy as she looked up at him. “Is anyone coming?”  
  
Nate glanced around again. “Coast is clear.”  
  
She relaxed, unfurling from the water until her shoulders and the swell of her breasts were visible. Like last time, she wore a sleeveless shirt of an unfamiliar cut. The skin around her right shoulder was a mottled dark teal, the same shade as her tail. Her hair spread in dark tendrils around her like silken seaweed.  
  
Flexing his fingers, Nate cleared his throat. “I, uh, didn’t think I’d see you again. What are you doing here?”  
  
Kaelysi glanced down, her hands swirling through the water. “I’ll be back.”  
  
Without another word, she dove straight down into the water, showing off her fluke. Then there was only a ring of white froth to mark the space where she’d been. Nate shivered, and not just because of the breeze that whistled through the bay.  
  
When Kaelysi emerged, she had a thick coil of rope around her shoulders, and a half-dozen crab pots floated around her. Each one was filled with mirelurk hatchlings. Nate could only stare as she lifted them onto the pier beside him. Water sloshed onto the pier while the crabs chittered in their cages.  
  
“There were more, but Noreal got into the pots.” Kaelysi’s mouth thinned into a stern line.  
  
Nate looked between her and the catch. “You, uh, you caught these for me?”  
  
She blinked up at him as if it was an odd question. “Don’t you have three brothers?”  
  
“Yes, but—” Then Nate thought better and changed track. “Thanks. Pickings have been slimmer lately.” He hesitated, then asked, “Did you hunt the big mirelurks?”  
  
Kaelysi nodded. She opened her mouth to reply—  
  
In the distance, a door slammed. “Nate! Did you just fall into the water?”  
  
Nate turned with a curse, motioning Anders to get down. “Bit late, aren’t you! I’m fine, now go away!”  
  
But when he glanced down, Kaelysi was already gone.  
  
“Dammit, Anders,” he grumbled. “You know how to pick your moments.”  
  
The pier creaked behind him. When he turned, Anders was staring at the crab pots. “The hell is that?”  
  
Nate rubbed his nails on his jacket. “I got us dinner while I was down there.”  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks as always to ScorpioSkies for betaing!

  
Now that Nate knew to look, he saw evidence of mer in the bay. Things that had been apparent coincidences were now blatant mer antics. Their crab pots were almost always full, and Nate would find extra coils of rope among _Manset_ ’s ground tacklethat hadn’t been there yesterday. And then there were the lengths of seaweed tangled in their nets, only the handiwork was too neat; Nate doubted ocean currents could braid seaweed to reinforce worn netting.  
  
But then on the first of September, Nate’s favorite beanie also went missing. After tossing his room and _Manset_ , Nate blamed his brothers. Every single one denied it, acting hurt as if Leon hadn’t ‘borrowed’ Anders’ belt last week or that Bobby hadn’t knocked over the laundry baskets and gotten all their clothes mixed up.  
  
After a week passed with no beanie in sight, Nate sighed and wondered what he’d done for this bad luck to strike him. Except that Bobby then accused him back of taking his Vim! shirt.  
  
“Why would I take your shirt?” Nate huffed.  
  
“Why would I take your stupid beanie?” Bobby returned.  
  
“Boys,” Pa called from the living room. “There’s no need for that.”  
  
Knowing he wouldn’t take either side, Nate and Bobby scowled at each other and slunk away to opposite ends of the house.  
  
The next time Nate did his laundry, he paid attention. Every piece of clothing was his, and he hung it out on the clothesline they’d strung across the front porch where most of the rain couldn’t reach.  
  
The next morning, his plaid shirt and towel were missing, along with one sock from every pair he owned.  
  
“This isn’t funny!” Nate yelled.  
  
Anders stuck his head out the door. “What are we supposed to be laughing at?”  
  
Nate swept an arm at the gaps on the clothesline. “Whoever keeps stealing my stuff!”  
  
Anders didn’t look particularly concerned. “Wasn’t me. Try Leon, he’s been skulking around the road smoking.”  
  
Nate grimaced. They all smoked occasionally, but since Leon’s short stay with the Children of Atom, he’d picked up the habit. Started trading with Rupert for smokes, until Rupert ran out and his last hope was Eli’s caravan. Which still hadn’t arrived.  
  
Nate gazed out at the forest. It was a gloomy morning, where the clouds hung low in the sky, pressing down on the Island. The Prescott yard stretched across the flat clifftop, the patchy grass interspersed with a few plants that could endure the coastal gales that blew in from the ocean behind them. A cracked road wound by the house like a sleek monster slithering through a sea of sickly grass, its hide cracked and mottled with age. The road ran south to the lighthouse and north to the ruined pre-war village that groaned in the mist, voicing the pain of the old ghosts that still haunted their home.  
  
Beyond the road, the woods dripped and creaked. Their trunks were crooked, their branches dark and bare, clawing at the bellies of the clouds. In the distance, the bay rumbled.  
  
Beneath the floorboards of the porch, the Island slumbered. Waiting.  
  
It would get them all in the end, Reeve once said.  
  
Nate shivered.  
  
“Uh, Nate…” when he glanced back, Anders pointed. “Aren’t those yours?”  
  
Nate followed the line of his finger to one of Ma’s potted plants by the steps. A pair of underwear was draped over a bush. Snatching them up, Nate returned them to the line while Anders snickered.  
  
“We already knew the thief had bad taste, but sheesh.”  
  
“Shut up, Anders.”  
  
Nate checked around the stairs and found a strange mark in the mud. It sure wasn’t a footprint, but it had to be fresh after the predawn showers that left the ground a sparkling green-gray.  
  
Nate followed the tracks halfway down the cliff path to the bay, but the mud turned to gravel that wouldn’t give up any secrets. For a second, he considered asking Reeve for help. But no, he wasn’t going to go begging.  
  
Shivering on the hill, he watched as a white curtain of rain swept in from the ocean and chased him back inside.  
  
Nate kept his eyes peeled for the next week, but the thief didn’t strike again. Maybe because nobody did any laundry. One afternoon, he strolled down the pier to check on _Manset_. The old girl needed a lot of love these days. While Pa never said it, Nate suspected that was part of the reason why Pa had gifted it to him after Leon got too seasick to captain his own boat. All Pa wanted these days was to fish from the pier and nap on the couch.  
  
Stepping onto the deck, Nate felt _Manset_ bob under his feet. Then he felt something shudder, followed by a clank.  
  
Someone was in the wheelhouse.  
  
Nate squinted through the windows, trying to place the silhouette. “Hey—!”  
  
He reached the doorway and froze as the stranger did. She was half-bent over his trunk, rifling through its contents while her black hair fell to her stomach, concealing her face. The satchel at her hip was lumpy.  
  
She also had a spotted gray seal tail.  
  
Nate gaped.  
  
She whipped around and hissed at him. “Back off! I found this boat first!”  
  
Nate’s mouth worked soundlessly for a few seconds. Then he managed, “What are you talking about? I own this boat!”  
  
The seal-woman snorted. “You weren’t here when I found it, were you?”  
  
For a half-second, Nate felt divorced from his body, watching the absurdity unravel from a distance. Then she took his lucky compass off the dashboard, and he snapped to. “Put that down!”  
  
Instead, she shoved it in her satchel and tossed her hair over her shoulders. Electric blue eyes glared out from under long bangs, fiercely mesmerizing, and it took Nate several seconds to notice other details. Like the fact she wore gloves, or that dark spots ran up her arms to disappear under her one-shouldered top. She had front flippers, he saw, which let her waddle like those horse-people he once saw a picture of. And waddle she did, unconcerned by the fact the top of her head reached his hip.  
  
Nate held out his arms to bar the exit. “Hey, hey, hey. You aren’t going anywhere with my stuff.”  
  
She scowled up at him, blue eyes blazing, and bared her teeth—  
  
“Nate!”  
  
He started. Looking around, he saw Kaelysi in the water beyond the stern. Wearing his missing beanie.  
  
Nate’s eyes narrowed, but she called, “Please don’t hurt Noreal!”  
  
Before he could even register the fear in her eyes, there was movement in his peripheral. Then a splash. He glanced behind him to see a ring of ripples in the water.  
  
Running a hand over his face, Nate fought a sudden spike of aggravation. “What the hell was that? And why do you have my beanie?”  
  
“Noreal,” Kaelysi said as if that answered the question. “She found this for me.”  
  
“Found it,” Nate repeated flatly.  
  
Kaelysi nodded, but unease twisted her expression as she peered up at him. “Noreal finds all sorts of things on land.”  
  
Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, well, I’d appreciate it if she returned all the stuff of mine that she _found_.”  
  
He opened his eyes to see Kaelysi holding out his beanie. Crouching by the railing, he accepted it. A quick turnover in his hands didn’t find any tears or damage besides being soaked through.  
  
“You know,” he said, “if you wanted to borrow my beanie, you could have just asked.”  
  
“I’ll get your things from Noreal,” Kaelysi said quietly. Her slender fingers curled and uncurled on the railing. “Just don’t hurt her.”  
  
“I’m not going to hurt her, okay?” Nate said impatiently. “Just… what even is she?”  
  
Kaelysi blinked. “A mer.”  
  
“No, I mean like… she’s different from you. Different tail and all.”  
  
Nate remembered the time he and Pa had stopped at the Dalton homestead. Nailed to the wall had been what old George Dalton insisted was a mer pelt, but Pa had quietly told him about seals on the boat ride home. Then, it had been just another reason not to believe in mer when no one could even agree on what they looked like.  
  
“She’s a larghan.”  
  
Larghan. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, Nate supposed, that they had names for themselves.  
  
He cocked his head. “And you are…?”  
  
“A marmor.”  
  
“Marmor. Right.” Nate ran a hand along his scruffy jaw. “Then there are those tidal hunters, too. Just how many others are there?”  
  
Kaelysi considered him. For once, her gaze didn’t slide past him, jumping away to scan their surroundings, but fixed on him with an unblinking intensity that made every muscle in his body freeze. Despite the human shape of her eyes, down to the warm hazel-green coloring, the intelligence in them was utterly alien.  
  
“Anguil,” she said, so suddenly Nate barely parsed the word. “They nest in the swamps. And…” She glanced around and leaned closer to whisper, “Orcun.”  
  
“Orcun?”  
  
“Shh!” Kaelysi looked around again, her hands flexing as if she was considering jumping into the boat. “They surround the islands and eat any mer who swim too far into the deep.”  
  
Nate frowned. The ocean, he knew, kept many secrets, but to see one legend scared of another—well. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t get eaten.”  
  
She blinked. “I should be saying that to you.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Noreal says big green landwalkers eat smaller landwalkers like you.”  
  
“Oh! You mean super mutants. We haven’t had any real trouble with them for years. The story is Reeve’s parents, Rupert, and my Ma hunted all the mutants in the area.”  
  
It was only then that Nate realized how close their hands were, resting almost side by side on the railing. He held his breath, the way he sometimes did when he saw a fish drift near his bait.  
  
Kaelysi looked down to the water beside her, her expression shifting like smoke. “We need to go.” Then she vanished with a splash.  
  
Nate remained crouched in place, even as a thin drizzle dampened his head and shoulders. _Manset_ creaked gently around him. Out to sea, the waters were dark and distant and calm.  
  
He wondered what else lurked out there.  
  
“Hey!” Rupert’s voice carried on the wind. Nate snapped up to find him standing by the front door to his shack, by a pile of fishing gear. “Who stole my lobster pots?”  
  
Nate suspected he knew. Turning over the sodden beanie, he had to admit Kaelysi looked kinda cute in it.  


—  


A tarp-tied bundle appeared on the family pier the same day Eli’s caravan finally arrived. Nate had just dumped their newly returned belongings on the kitchen table to sort through when he heard a commotion out the front.  
  
Nate strode out the door to see Eli’s caravan milling by the road. The man himself stood as always in front of his pack brahmin, reins in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His guards were fanned out around him, but their wariness gave Nate pause. He recognized some of their faces; every last one of them was sodden and grimy with mud up to their knees.  
  
The rest of Nate’s family were already sorting through the wares on offer. Anders picked up a skillet and made to playfully swing it at Leon, only for one of the guards to bark at him to drop it. As Nate strode over to join his family, he noticed Eli looked older, his hair grayer, all the starker against his black skin.  
  
Ma had her list out, grabbing this and that to shove into Pa’s arms. “Same as always, Eli. I’ll sort your caps in a moment.”  
  
“Hold a second.” Eli frowned at the wares Ma had already collected. “Things are tough for everyone right now, and I had to raise my prices.”  
  
Ma cocked an eyebrow, but her face was otherwise smooth. “Oh? To what?”  
  
“For all that there,” he gestured to her armful of canned and boxed foods, “that’ll be three hundred caps.”  
  
“Double?” Ma squawked. “That’s robbery! We’re fishermen, not mainlanders!”  
  
“‘S as fair as a deal you’ll get, seeing as one of my boys got eaten on the trip down.”  
  
Disgust and horror flashed around the circle of Nate’s family. Given their strong family resemblance, he was sure his face looked the same.  
  
Pa dropped a hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Super mutants?”  
  
Eli grimaced. “No. A gang of cannibals laired up in Kitteredge Pass, where the Fog’s so thick you could look at a tree and see your mama.”  
  
Nate sensed the capital F. He’d grown up on the same stories as everyone else, of the unnatural Fog that pervaded the Island, coming and going like the tides to lead men to their doom.  
  
“It’d have to be one pretty tree,” Anders replied, but his heart wasn’t in it.  
  
“Anything else we should know about?” Leon asked, shooting Anders a stern look.  
  
Eli’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “’Sides the Fog, muties, and Atom’s kiddies? It’s enough to make a man think of settling down.”  
  
“Ah, but what would we do without you?” Pa said with his usual easy humor.  
  
Eli grinned. “Never a shortage of folks who want to make caps but can’t stand boats.”  
  
While Pa kept Eli occupied, Ma poured over the list, carefully deciding what they could do without, then headed back inside to check their caps. By this point, Ollie and Cleo had shown up, as had Reeve, and they browsed Eli’s wares under the guards’ wary gazes.  
  
“So tell me,” Eli said, “anything interesting happening in these parts? Any trappers move in nearby?”  
  
“No trappers,” Ollie said. “Mer in the bay, but you’re safe outta the water.”  
  
Eli raised one bushy eyebrow. “No shit?”  
  
Disbelief was a strange thing sometimes. Nate watched the play of emotion on Eli’s face, at once knowing he was wrong and knowing why it would be ludicrous to believe the story was right.  
  
Ollie held up his hands to ward off the derision. “Don’t ask me, ask Nate.”  
  
Nate found himself freezing. He didn’t want to say anything about the mer. Not when Eli was the Island’s greatest gossip.  
  
Eli’s skeptical gaze swiveled to Nate, who cleared his throat. “Fell outta my boat in a storm and got pushed back in.” Precisely the kind of story any fisherman could peddle. As for the rest, it was too personal. Too crazy. Too dangerous.  
  
Eli’s second eyebrow joined the first. “Oh yeah?”  
  
If anything, the disbelief was comforting. “Yeah.”  
  
The front door creaked, and Ma strode across the dewy grass. “I’ve decided, Eli.”  
  
While Ma took her pick, Nate faded into the background. One or two of the guards still gave him funny looks but glanced away whenever he caught them staring. He looked down the cliffs to the bay, which rippled like a scratched up sheet of silver. From up here, it seemed deceptively placid.  
  
For Nate’s part, he snagged two bottles of Vim! and a badly burned Unstoppables comic, then retreated to hide his prizes while his brothers were still outside. When he returned downstairs, the rest of his family were gathered by the kitchen table, sorting their new purchases.  
  
“Does anyone else think it was more than just cannibals that delayed Eli?” Leon asked. He pulled a cigarette from a fresh carton, only for Ma to glare until he put it away.  
  
“I don’t know. Escaping from cannibals could make for a swashbuckling adventure,” Anders replied.  
  
Leon snorted. “You’ve been reading too many pulps.”  
  
“If Eli just used a boat to travel, things’d be easier,” Bobby said.  
  
Leon’s eyes narrowed. “Well, not all of us can stand the water, can we?” It was still a sore point for him after all these years.  
  
“Back to the original point,” Nate interrupted, only to get a sour look from Leon before he fiddled with the cigarette carton again. “Sounds like something’s happening on the Island.”  
  
“Ah, it isn’t so bad,” Pa said from his armchair by the fire. “Those northern troubles, they don’t bother us. We’ll be fine here.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to ScorpioSkies for letting me borrow Nora Hart! You can find some concept art for Noreal  
> [here](https://eluvisen.tumblr.com/post/184731909814/design-for-scorpio-skies-s-noreal-from-the).
> 
> This fic is going on a brief hiatus while I finish the remaining chapters. Usually I would have a fic completely written before posting, but I didn't manage to finish it before May. Thank you all for your support so far and I hope you stick around for more!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! I did not anticipate that it would take this long to complete the remainder of the fic, but it grew out of control and is now twice the length I thought it would be, sitting at a total of 21 chapters. I'm still editing the back half of the fic, but have enough chapters finished that posting should resume as normal from here on out.
> 
> Minor edits have been made to the first four chapters, but you certainly don't need to re-read them to read chapter five onwards.
> 
> As always I'd like to thank my beta ScorpioSkies for all her support and I'd also like to thank RemindMeWhoIAm and Ariejul for letting me play with their OCs!
> 
> Thank you all for your patience and my apologies for taking so long to post an update!

A new normal settled in Brooke’s Head. Fall swept over the Island in coastal rains while the nearby woods shook off the last of their leaves, leaving their orange finery to rot into the earth. North of Brooke’s Head, the dead village faded into the mist, a mere specter in the distance. Nate’s lucky compass hadn’t been returned with the rest of their belongings; without it, he was consigned to the shore. 

There was no shortage of work to do as they prepared for winter, but Nate felt restless all the same. Fishing from the pier just wasn’t the same as riding an ocean swell. But it sure left him a lot of time to stare out at the sullen sea, its body gray and foamless, enormous and growing.

After a while, mer became a part of the ambiance akin to the ocean’s roar and the silver-bellied clouds crouching in the sky. Some days Nate glimpsed a shape underwater, or another sock went missing. Some days passed without even a hint of a tail. Some days had Kaelysi peeking out of the water to watch Nate, only to vanish if anyone else approached.

One morning, at low tide, Nate tied one of the rowboats under the pier and waited. It took four days, but on the fifth, success. He was almost drifting off to sleep, lulled by the rhythm of the sea licking at the hull, when copper flashed in the water.

Kaelysi surfaced to peer at him. Saltwater droplets rolled down her skin, catching on her eyelashes and in the corners of her mouth. She glanced around the underside of the pier, taking in the algae that bloomed on the planks above their heads, adding to the pungent aroma of brine and damp wood. She looked confused.

Nate grinned. “Hi.”

“The boat can’t fit under here at high tide,” she said, eyeing him cautiously.

“Which is why I’m here at low tide.” When that didn’t help with her confusion, Nate added, “Thought it’d be nice to have somewhere to talk in private.”

Kaelysi glanced up again to the pier overhead, where thin slats of light only made it dingier. Then her eyes snapped back to him. Despite the dim air, her eyes captured him with the same power of a cresting wave. “I’m here. What did you want to talk about?”

Nate blinked. Every question sailed out of his head, lost on the high seas. He’d spent so much time trying to lure her in that it didn’t feel real now she was here. “Uh. What do you get up to when you’re not hanging around here?”

Kaelysi blinked. “I hunt, I gather materials, I explore…”

“Are there any other settlements you show yourself to?” Nate found himself quite curious, although if more people saw mer, surely they wouldn’t be a superstition.

“Marcus, Old Longfellow… There used to be another, on the other side of the Island. Where a boardwalk stretches from land to a guard tower set up on the nearby rocks.” Her voice was soft, tentative, like cautious tides spreading across the sand with white-tipped fingers.

Nate frowned as he thought, trying to pin the image she painted to the places he knew. “You mean Rock Point Camp?”

Kaelysi gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know what the human name for it is. There was a pair bond there. They were kind. But they’ve been gone for some time. I think they died.”

Nate felt his brow furrow further as he thought. Rock Point Camp was owned by a man called Rick, who had come down from Mainside to claim the derelict shack for himself. “How long ago was this?”

Another shrug. “Years.”

He supposed it would be hard to keep track of time underwater.

Their talks didn’t become common, exactly, but once every week or so, Kaelysi would appear at low tide while Nate would tie the rowboat under the pier. Cradled in the cavern of wood and stone, where the whisper of lapping water echoed off the pier above their heads, they existed in their own little world. Kaelysi’s voice never lost that stilted edge, her answers short and clipped, but she didn’t shy away from any questions, either.

And, to Nate’s amusement, she talked with her hands, occasionally splashing water as she gestured this way and that. Her motions were graceful, rhythmic even. Every flick of a finger or twist of a wrist captured an elegance that her words lacked. The more she talked, the more Nate noticed patterns in her gestures, like dragging a fist across her throat as a negative or splaying her fingers to emphasize whatever point she was making. That made him wonder.

Eventually, Kaelysi would lounge beside the rowboat. Sometimes she stretched her tail out in plain view, inches below the surface, a glimmering shape of teal. More than once, Nate was struck with the toddler-like compulsion to reach out and see if her tail felt like a dolphin’s hide. But that sure seemed like an easy way to lose a finger or two, so he curled his hands into fists until the urge passed.

The rest of October passed in the blink of an eye. While there wasn’t any snow on the horizon yet, it was soon impossible to step outside without two jackets to ward off the coastal gales. But the plunging weather was preferable to Anders and Leon’s latest feud, so one early November afternoon, Nate escaped to the pier to check if Kaelysi was around for their low tide chat. 

Peering into the water, he waited for her sleek shape to glide under the surface, then—

It wasn’t Kaelysi, but another mer. Her skin was pale, almost luminescent in the gloom. Her vibrant auburn hair was twisted up in a hairnet of seaweed, dotted with tiny shells, and her tail was a similar shade of red, shimmering and indistinct under the surface.

Nate blinked. “Um. Hi?”

“So, you’re the human that’s safe?” Despite the words, her narrowed eyes and slithering tone—along with the catch on the word _safe_ —made her opinion clear.

He cleared his throat. “That’s me.”

Instead of replying, she watched him, drawing out the silence until he had to squirm. But he was caught by her luminous gaze, as green as wild seas on an overcast day.

Nate ventured, “Was… was there something you wanted?”

“I had a question.”

Praying he wouldn’t regret it, he said, “Shoot.”

She pinned him a moment longer under her green gaze before pulling something from the pouch at her hip. Silver light reflected off its surface as she dangled it in front of him.

Nate’s eyes widened. The mer held his heirloom compass, water rolling down the lid to gather along the underside. 

“Where did you get that?” he demanded. “That’s mine!”

It swung back and forth in a gentle arc, dangling from her slender fingers. The lid was etched with scratches as familiar as Nate’s hand print, chronicling generations of Prescott journeys.

“Tell me what it is,” she purred, “and you can have it back.”

Nate had to clamp down on the urge to snatch it out of her hands. Bargains—Ava said mer loved bargains, so he had to work with that. “All right. That’s my lucky compass. I never go sailing without it.”

Her hand dropped an inch as she watched him, unblinking. Something in her manner shifted from vaguely threatening to interested. “How is it lucky? Where did you get it from?”

“It’s, uh, been in my family since before the Great War. Kept my pa alive and my grandmother before him.” Nate considered all the memories etched into the compass, from the scar along its side to the dents in its back. He wondered how to explain that the little compass could mean the difference between drowning at sea or returning home with an impressive catch.

She raised an eyebrow. “What does it do?”

“The needle will always point north so you can find your way home,” Nate said, tamping down on his sudden irritation. “Can I have it back, please? I answered your questions like I agreed.”

Again with the narrow-eyed look, then her expression broke into a smirk. “You aren’t so bad.”

She reached out, and it took every ounce of self-control Nate had to not yank the compass out of her grip. As soon as it was safe in his palm, it filled the compass-sized hole in his being. He turned it over, hefting its familiar weight, popping the top open, searching for damage. There was a new scratch in the lid, but the needle still swung north with total confidence. Probably the best condition he could expect.

Nate looked up at the mer still floating in front of him. “Thank you.”

“I’m Juliri,” she said, then vanished in a ring of silent ripples.

—

With his lucky compass finally returned, Nate could take _Manset_ out to sea again for one last hurrah. Then it was time to prepare her for another winter. He could also look into installing a lock on the door to the wheelhouse. 

The morning was dark and drizzly, with only a thin yellow glow on the eastern horizon to alleviate the gloom. Water gently slapped _Manset_ ’s sides as Nate began a full cleanout, emptying the boat of every bit of equipment and junk that had accumulated over the year. The rest of Brooke’s Head wasn’t so eager to brave the hunch weather save Ava, who left her offerings in rain or shine.

As for Nate, a little fog and drizzle weren’t going to get between him and looking after the old girl. While inspecting the anchor rode, he found his gaze drifting to the rocks, picking out Ava’s silhouette in the gray. She was like clockwork.

But moments later, her gray shape toppled over.

Nate was moving in a heartbeat, feet thundering on the pier. When he hit the sand, it went flying. His lungs burned with every breath, but he didn’t slow down, not until he reached the slick black rocks.

Nate squinted into the gloom. “Ava! Are you all right?”

Through the sea fog, he saw what could have been a large rock or someone sitting upright—and he didn’t trust his eyes when it seemingly moved.

“Here!”

The fog took Ava’s voice, warped it, and refracted it from all directions. Something about her tone sounded wrong to his ears.

“Hold still, Ava! I’m coming.” Nate’s heart hammered in his chest, faster than his feet could pick their way across the rocks.

He moved towards the rumbling ocean, trusting his memory more than his eyes. Especially when he saw another boulder shifting in the fog. Past the rush of the tides, feminine murmurs echoed in the predawn.

Then he got close enough to make sense of what he was seeing and realized why the back of his neck was prickling.

Ava was leaning on her elbows, her offerings scattered across the glossy rocks, while a mer hunched beside her. One he’d never seen before, with sopping dark blonde locks that clung to her skin, her not-quite-dolphin tail draped in a turquoise coil. She held Ava’s hand in a white-knuckled grip. Even from this distance, he could see the whites of her eyes.

Nate held up his hands. “It’s okay. I’m just here to help Ava.”

Ava sighed and tried to sit up. “I’ve fallen over before, you know.”

“No offense, but you’re not as young as you used to be.” Ignoring her acidic blue stare, Nate knelt to check her over for any injuries. “Anything that hurts?”

“My pride,” Ava grumbled, only for the mer to make a noise of concern. The marmor didn’t say anything, just watched Ava with her eyebrows furrowed until Ava relented. “My tailbone aches, but nothing feels broken.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “Let’s get you back to shore.”

“My offerings—”

“I’m sure the mer can forgive you for one day, right?” He glanced at the marmor, praying that she would back him up. At her nod, he fought a sigh of relief. “Right then.”

A wave crashed nearby, dousing them all with seaspray. The mer twisted, her mottled turquoise tail stretching towards the ocean. Nate noticed she sported several shallow scrapes from the teeth of the rocks.

“Do you, uh, want a hand back to the ocean?”

The mer’s stormy gray eyes flashed to him, and she hunched inward.

Ava rested a hand on her arm. “It’s all right. He’s trustworthy.”

The mer looked to Nate again, and he held still as she surveyed him, her mouth pinched tight. Then she nodded.

Between the wet rocks and a flighty mer, Nate took care as he circled to her side. She peered up at him through wet streaks of blonde hair, and he suspected that she wasn’t breathing.

“Okay,” he said, to give her warning before he scooped her into his arms. “Let’s get you back to the ocean.”

Bundled up as Nate was, their skin never touched, but as always, he couldn’t help but marvel at the impossibility of her tail. Her skin was warm, the wet soaking through his already damp clothes, and stank of brine. She held still, but she was heavy, and her fluke dragged along the ground. The rocks were glossy wet, and Nate planted every step with care lest he sent them both tumbling like Ava.

He stepped into seaspray as a fresh wave crashed nearby, concealing the drop-off. This close to the edge, every step was a terrifying yet thrilling risk. Beyond the rocks, the expanse of the ocean heaved and hurled with an unbound force; the combined might of water and wind was a continuous roar in his ears. Standing in the gale, with the waves rushing over his boots, he felt dangerously weightless. Every spray of saltwater was a caress against his cheeks. An invitation.

But Nate couldn’t forget the mer in his arms.

Waiting for a lull in the waves, he lowered her into the water. She slipped out of his arms with an eagerness matched by the swell that rushed forward to meet her, showering Nate in spindrift. When he wiped saltwater from his eyes, there was no trace that the mer had ever been in the swirling dark waters.

Nate returned to Ava’s side and helped her to her feet, supporting her while she stretched and groaned. Ignoring her insistence that she was fine, he kept one arm around her as they shuffled back to shore. He got her as far as her cabin porch before she shooed him away, and he only went without a fight because he went straight next door to ask Ollie to check on her.

With nothing more to do for Ava, Nate slowly retreated to _Manset_. In his mind’s eye, he could see her falling again and again. Could imagine the crunch of her brittle bones as she hit the cold black rock. So he was a little more distracted than he should’ve been when yanking the cushions off the wheelhouse’s seats and scattered the moldy remains of a sandwich across the floor.

“Anders,” Nate groaned.

A black patch stained the cushion where it had touched the sandwich, and Nate tossed the pillows out the door with a sigh. Maybe Ma could make Anders clean them up. But that left Nate with the less than pleasant job of dumping the sandwich’s remains. At least he’d found a glove earlier, even if it was damp. Nate scooped up the moldy chunks and tossed them overboard, only for a nearby seagull to screech and swoop. It missed the rotten bread pieces and landed on the railing with a huff.

Shaking his head, Nate ditched the glove and got back to work.

As the sun clawed its way up the sky, unseen but still felt behind the cloud cover, three groups formed on the deck: the to-keep pile, the garbage pile, and a flock of overly interested seagulls. Whenever Nate discovered more old food, the seagulls were more than eager to snap it up when he tossed it out the door. Except that when he threw his deck plate key out the door, one daring seagull swooped to catch it.

“Hey!” Nate was on his feet, but the damn bird was already out of range, flying over the water.

It quickly realized its prize was not edible and dropped the key into the water.

“Shit!”

Nate stared at the spot where it landed, hands at his jacket zipper. He could swim as well as any other Harborman, but the waters were a cold teal-black that would suck him down in moments. With no visibility, he may as well have scoured the beach for a speck of diamond.

Well, he’d have to ask Cleo for a spare deck plate key.

At least there was always more work to be done on the old girl. But rather than risk losing any more equipment, Nate stuck to scrubbing down the wheelhouse.

Something splashed nearby. “Aw come now, darlin’, he don’t need that.”

Nate jumped. He cast about for the source to see two mer a dozen feet from his boat. One was the marmor from earlier, while the speaker was an unfamiliar larghan. His bronzed skin was stark against the dark water as he bobbed in front of her.

The marmor frowned. When she raised one arm, Nate realized she held his key—then it sailed through the air to land with a clatter on the deck. 

“Damn,” the larghan sighed.

The marmor splashed him for good measure, then vanished. That left the larghan to bob in the current. He twisted in the water and noticed Nate watching him. 

“Oh. Hi there.” He didn’t seem at all concerned as he slid up beside the boat, peering onto the deck. “Name’s Kamer.”

Nate kept both eyes on him. “Nice to meet you. And no, you can’t have my deck plate key.”

Kamer deflated at once. “Shame, that. If you change your mind, tell me first. Noreal doesn’t need to know.”

Nate asked, “Who was that other mer?”

“That’s our Skyleros. She don’t talk much to strangers, but she’s fast.” Under his breath, he added, “And a softie.”

Nate had to fight a chuckle. “Well, tell her I said thanks.”

Kamer looked put out, but said, “Sure.” After a beat, he added, “Are you sure you need that thing?”

—

The bay’s new normal was strange, but Nate didn’t mind. Something was thrilling about an open secret; the ocean had given up one of her mysteries to him, and he didn’t have to hide that. Nate knew he shouldn’t get cocky; even if there were mer lurking below the surface, that didn’t mean they were the only creatures in the endless blue. Or that the ocean itself couldn’t swallow him whole if he didn’t show enough respect.

One breezy afternoon, Nate was prepping to winterize _Manset_ when there was a flash of copper in his peripheral. Kaelysi surfaced beside the boat, water catching in the corners of her mouth as she smiled.

“Why hello there,” Nate said with a grin of his own.

Kaelysi peered over the railing. “Are you taking your boat out?”

“Not today. Just taking care of the old girl.”

“If you need to hunt, one of Marcus’s mirelurks escaped to a nearby island and is nesting.”

Nate had zero intention of bothering the old swamp wizard if he didn’t have to. Somehow, Marcus would know if anyone messed with mirelurks in a ten-mile radius. “Thanks for the offer, but we’re not hurting for food. Gotta hunker down for the winter.”

“As you like.” Kaelysi leaned her arms on the railing and rested her chin on her hands. Her liquid hazel eyes followed him, unblinking.

Nate found himself strangely self-conscious as Kaelysi watched him work. He ignored it as best he could—wouldn’t it be a joke to screw up something simple in front of her? “So, uh, how do you know Marcus, anyway?”

“We’ve known him for years.” Her smile turned sly. “It’s hard to resist so many mirelurks in one place.”

Nate chuckled, imagining Marcus running down the beach to chase Noreal away from a mirelurk nest. It was funnier when she wasn’t stealing from him. “I sure wouldn’t want to piss him off.”

Kaelysi shrugged, her eyes dancing with mirth. “He only blows bubbles if you don’t give his hatchlings back.”

He shook his head in wonder. “I learned that you don’t anger anything on the ocean. It’s not worth the comeuppance.”

Kaelysi considered that. “If I couldn’t swim, I would say the same.”

Nate shot her a dirty look. “I’m a Harborman. Of course I can swim.”

Her bell-note laughter rang across the deck. Nate found himself coming to a halt by the starboard railing where she clung.

“Humans,” she chortled, “think they can swim.”

“Now that’s just offensive. I learned to swim before I could walk.”

“Then I’ll race you around the Island,” she challenged.

Nate crouched by the railing so they were at eye level. “One day, I’ll take you up on that.”

Except that robbed the lingering amusement from her face. “So eager to risk drowning.”

Her concern was sweet but pricked at his pride. “I could cruise around the Island with one hand tied behind my back.”

No hint of laughter now. “You don’t know how many boats have sunk in these waters.”

Nate found himself imagining what it would be like to swim along the bottom of the ocean, where ancient wrecks emerged from the blue gloom like barnacle-ridden colossi. “ _Manset_ may be old, but she’s steady. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I do,” Kaelysi said. “The first time I saw you, you were drowning. And you were far from the first human body I’ve seen in the water.”

That made him pause. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story, per se, but a mer would have a far different perspective from underwater. “You rescue many humans? Or was I just lucky?” How close had he been to drowning? 

Kaelysi sighed. “They’re usually already dead.”

A muscle in Nate’s leg prickled with pins and needles. He shifted his weight without taking his eyes off her. “Thank you.”

They were so close he could see her pupils widen, just slightly, as her eyes darted over his face. “For what?”

“For caring.”

This close, Nate could see the tiny changes in Kaelysi’s face: her brows twitching upward with surprise, the corners of her mouth shifting, the minute tightening around her eyes. Maybe she was wild and strange, her hair slithering down her neck in dark trails, but he was glad that his words could chase the haunted look from her expression.

She’d been out of the water long enough that some strands of her hair had started to dry in frizzy clouds. If Nate reached out, he could tuck a stray wisp behind her ear. His fingers prickled at the thought.

Over her shoulder, two dark spots emerged around the coastline.

“You need to hide,” Nate said.

Kaelysi glanced around, following his line of sight, then sank with barely a splash. As the boats grew larger, Nate rose to his feet and squinted. At first, he thought it was Daniel Dalton and his crew coming to catch up with Pa and trade in exchange for a day of fishing. But the pair of small trawlers were unfamiliar, their hulls a sleek blue that would conceal them in dark water.

Surely they were too far away to have seen Kaelysi. He glanced down; the waters were dark and quiet. 

Nate rushed up the beach to warn Brooke’s Head. By the time the pair of trawlers stopped, one out to sea and the other near the Prescott pier, his whole family was waiting, along with Cleo and Reeve.

“Ahoy!” one man called, waving his cap over his head. “Permission to come aboard?”

Harborfolk had few niceties, but they always respected property lines. Nate scanned the faces in the closest boat, but none were familiar. He traded a glance with Leon, who stood at his full height, one hand resting on his belt near his sidearm.

“Permission granted,” Pa called back, “but no weapons!”

The speaker gave a thumbs up, then the trawler— _Challenger_ —moored beside _Manset_. Nate watched like a hawk to make sure they didn’t scratch his boat. The leader made a show of passing his rifle to a shipmate before jumping to the pier with his hands raised.

The sailor was rendered in earthy tones as if he’d been formed from the Island itself: hair blackened like irradiated pine bark, skin as lined as the shore at low tide, a coat as drab a gray as hardy island grasses. But then, Nate wondered if sailor was the right word when that anorak slipped open a few inches to reveal dark leather armor. Not to mention that his cheek was ragged with scar tissue, spreading from the slope of his nose to his ear, where a chunk of the lobe was missing.

Conciliatory or no, there was an ease to the way the man held himself that rubbed Nate the wrong way.

He grinned under their scrutiny. “Captain Bardan. First thing’s first,” he said. “We’re not here to poach in your territory.”

“Then what are you here for?” Leon asked.

“We—”

“You’re fully equipped for trawling,” Cleo interrupted, her eyes on the boat. “But I won’t be seeing those nets in our waters, will I? Certainly not this late in the season.”

Nate followed her line of sight and saw the harpoon guns perched on the side of the boat. Beyond them, trawl net reels with wicked silver netting, designed to slice through the skin of any poor critter that fell into its clutches. And the more its prey struggled, the more pain it inflicted.

“We hunt a special kind of prey, in all seasons, so we won’t be getting in your way.”

“What on earth are you using those steel nets on?” Nate asked.

The captain grinned, revealing yellowed teeth. “Mer.”

Nate went cold.

A ripple went through his family. Leon made a brave display of incredulity, Ma and Pa traded glances, and Anders looked to Nate. Nate glared back until he looked away, praying the fisherman didn’t notice.

Pa ran a hand over his graying stubble. “Never caught a fish that big.”

“They’re fast,” Bardan said, “and put up a hell of a fight. And we heard rumors that they’ve been in the area.”

Anders couldn’t help but glance towards Nate again, and Nate wanted to shove him off the pier. But Ma said, “I’m afraid those rumors were wrong. We’ve only seen dolphins lately.”

Now Reeve was staring sidelong at Ma. Nate had listened to her lie to raiders before—it came with being a mother—but a part of him was surprised that she was sticking her neck out over this. Then again, she liked to hurry along armed bands of strangers by any means necessary.

“Easy to confuse the two,” Bardan agreed. “But dolphins don’t push drowning men out of the water.” 

Nate stiffened, and the fisherman noticed. His sharp blue gaze cut through Nate. “Rumor is a mer rescued someone in these parts. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“No,” Nate said, then realized his mistake. Resisting the urge to rub the back of his neck, he added, “Being thrown around the ocean in a storm doesn’t mean some stupid superstition was doing the throwing.”

Bardan smiled, but his eyes were cold. “I got more than enough trophies to prove they ain’t a superstition. And we can prove it to you. If you leave us alone to our hunt.”

“Bullshit,” Leon said, startling everyone. He wasn’t usually the kind for swearing. “You think you can sell us some story about hunting mer to let you fish in our waters?”

“Well said,” Ma agreed. “I’m afraid your crew should move on. We don’t want any trouble in our waters. You have a whole ocean to fish in, however. Best of luck out there.”

There was no defying Ma’s stern, authoritative tone. Bardan glanced from face to face, and when he found no support, he inclined his head. It didn’t hide his clenched jaw. “As you say. We’ll move on.”

They waited in silence as he clambered back into his trawler, and it pulled away from the pier. The crew was almost eerily quiet, given their thwarted hunt.

“Well,” Pa said, “that’s that, I suppose.”

“I doubt it,” Reeve replied. “This is just another obstacle to their hunt.”

“These are our waters,” Nate said, sharper than he intended. “Myth or no myth, they can’t just fish in our territory.”

Their eyes met, and a jolt ran through Nate’s stomach. But he didn’t give ground, fueled by some prickly emotion he didn’t want to put a name to, and Reeve shoved his hands in his pockets. “Just—be careful out there.” With that, he strode back to shore without a backward glance.

Silence fell with the grace of a tranqued gulper. More than one pair of eyes darted in Nate’s direction. “What?” he snapped.

Ma was the first to clear her throat. “No sense just standing around. Those fishermen are gone, at least for now.”

“How did they even know to look here?” Bobby asked.

Leon scowled. “Eli.”

With the danger passed—at least for now—folks drifted away from the pier. Nate caught Leon’s arm before he could turn away. “Thanks, Leo.”

Leon paused. A breeze ruffled his auburn hair, making him squint as he looked at the expanse of gray-blue ocean. “If a mer did haul me back here… well, I owe them one.” His gaze slid to Nate. “Reeve’s right. We need to be careful—or you do, rather.”

Then he too left, leaving Nate alone on the pier. Beyond _Manset_ bobbing beside him, the waters were still and silent. He watched the horizon until the twin trawlers were gone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to ScorpioSkies for all her help this chapter! I've also referenced some lines from Derek Walcott's poem The Sea is History, so credit where credit's due.
> 
> Friendly reminder this fic is tagged for the graphic depictions of violence.

Not a single mer haunted the bay. Nate didn’t know if Ava had warned them or if they simply knew when they were being pursued. In his mind’s eye, he saw Kaelysi beached in the swamp, replaying the exact moment her white-eyed desperation gave way to limp resignation.

If anyone else had found her that day—well, he didn’t want to think about it.

The second day after the hunters’ arrival, Nate rustled up Cleo and his brothers to patrol their stretch of the coast. Winterizing _Manset_ would have to wait. Even if the weather hadn’t yet taken its final plunge, it was still utterly miserable. They’d all rather be huddled beside a warm fire, but Nate wasn’t going to let anyone hurt the local mer on his watch. Cleo, meanwhile, wouldn’t let strangers fish in their waters, period.

Except they found no trace of the hunters. Nor did they find anything on the third or fourth day, so maybe the hunters had actually moved on.

On the fifth day, Nate and Cleo rode out in _Manset_ , more out of habit than anything else. The day was all flat colors with no contrast: the sky a patchwork of white and blue above an ocean of rippling steel. Seagulls wheeled and screeched overhead, buffeted by the same gale that tore through the woollen weave of his beanie when he boarded the old girl.

At the wheel, Nate steered the boat south past the cape, then back north. At the ruins of Southwest Harbor, some of the distant black rocks appeared to be moving. A seal colony. Nate squinted, but there was no flash of human skin among the stone and fur. With no other vessels in sight, he turned south again.

Which was why he didn’t realize anything was wrong until Cleo yelled into the wheelhouse, “We got followers!”

Startled, Nate whipped around, but the square of sea visible past her shoulder was clear. He crossed the wheelhouse in three quick steps to lean outside and—there. Turning out of Southwest Harbor were two dark trawlers.

Nate’s gut tightened, but he said, “Now they know we’re watching.”

“This is the part of the plan I was never clear on,” Cleo yelled over the wind. “What do we do now? There’s only two of us and a dozen of them!”

“Stay out of range but make sure they know we’re in the neighborhood.”

Nate took the wheel again and pushed the throttle lever up to full power. _Manset_ shuddered beneath him as she skimmed over the swell, practically floating over the water. Through the windshield, the coastline was dark and gray, slithering out of the water.

All the while, Cleo reported the trawlers’ movements. “Almost looks like they’re heading out to sea… no, wait, they turned south.” Then: “They’re definitely following us. Shit.”

Nate’s mouth went dry. It was one thing to challenge the fisherman with all of his brothers in tow plus Cleo. But this, he didn’t like the look of. “Let’s keep the distance between us and them!”

_Manset_ roared as she flew south, diving through spindrift, but the twin trawlers were like shadows, fast and dark and unyielding. Chest tight, Nate leaned into the steering, willing the old girl to go faster, faster still, but every time he glanced over his shoulder, the trawlers were a little bit larger.

The sound of a horn shattered any thought of escape. Nate glanced through the starboard window to see _Challenger_. A crewman was leaning over the port railing, waving an arm.

Nate reluctantly sounded _Manset_ ’s horn to answer the hail.

“Ho there!” the crewman called. “We need your help!”

Nate looked to Cleo, whose jaw was set. “No sense provoking them,” she said, “but what can we do that two fully manned crews can’t?”

“Only one way to find out.” He eased off the throttle but didn’t kill the engine. “Stay at the wheel. I’ll talk to them.”

As Nate passed by, Cleo gripped his arm. “Be careful.”

His hand crept to his pocket, where his compass sat. “Will do.”

Nate stepped out of the wheelhouse and squinted through the overcast glare. Bardan leaned on _Challenger_ ’s railing, a mere dozen feet away. Even from a distance, his level gaze could pierce like a knife tip. The second trawler trailed farther behind _Manset_.

Nate drew himself up to his full height and squared his shoulders, hand hovering near his sidearm. Bardan remained unperturbed, never losing his yellow toothed smile.

Nate glared back. “Something we can help you with?”

“There is.” Bardan idly scratched at his beard, and Nate’s gaze was drawn to those awful scars. “You told me that you’d never seen a mer before, right?”

The hairs rose along Nate’s nape. “Right.”

Bardan smirked while his crewmen stopped to watch. So many eyes, dark and sunken, all watching Nate. He returned his attention to Nate, scratching his beard. “See, me and the boys got a little problem with that. We know you’re lying.”

A chill ran down Nate’s spine. He opened his mouth, but Bardan raised his hand for silence.

“I don’t wanna hear ‘nother of your lies,” he said. “I just want you to see the truth about those creatures. They’re playing nice with your folk for now, but that ain’t gonna last.”

Bardan beckoned one of his men over—a grizzled older man with an unkempt beard and a heavy-browed glower. Unprompted, the man shrugged off his anorak and peeled back his shirt, revealing a torso marred with deep, ugly scars. They slashed in all directions, too erratic to be claw marks from any Island predator.

“Samuel here lost the last of his family to mer,” Bardan said conversationally. “Took his two sons fishing one day, same as always. Thing is, this time a mer got itself tangled up in their nets. So they did what any of us would’ve done and pulled the nets up.”

“Then,” Samuel continued, his eyes glittering, “they attacked.” He drew his shirt down and wet his lips. “My boys were younger than you. They were excited, yanking the damn nets with their hands. Then one of those things pulled Jackie in.”

His hands curled into fists, his features hardening and eyes growing distant.

“It was dragging him out to sea, lifting him out the water just so we can see him struggle. Then John shot a harpoon, tryna save his brother—and it took Jackie under. Next thing we knew, they started attacking the boat, trying to capsize it…”

Nate could feel the phantom rockingunder his feet from that fateful night at Little Gott Island.

“Me and John hit the water, and after that… I couldn’t see much, but the water was red. They kept pulling me down, clawing at me with knives— I don’t… I don’t remember much, but when I woke up I was lying in Ted’s clinic, and my sons weren’t.” He paused. Nostrils flared, muscles in his neck taut. “Our tub was sunk, but a few days later my nets washed up. What was left of my boys were in ‘em.”

Bardan bowed his head. “’Preciate it, Samuel.”

Samuel grunted, his eyes boring into Nate’s before he seized his anorak and stalked back to his post.

“Samuel’s story ain’t the only one.” Bardan sighed. “Most folks that meet mer also meet a grisly end. Only a matter of time before they betray you, too.”

The worst part was how easily Nate could picture two drowned boys. Kaelysi had turned on him in a heartbeat, after all.

“Telling us about ‘em is the right thing to do,” Bardan continued, almost gentle. “Even if they’re acting like your friends now, chances are they’re drowning someone else’s kid for sport. You just tell us where we can find ‘em, and we’ll take care of it. You won’t have to do a thing.”

Nate hesitated.

Unbidden, he thought of finding Kaelysi in the swamp, utterly helpless. The white-ringed fear in her eyes when he’d crouched beside her. And before that, when she’d clung to the side of his boat, drenched with rainwater. When she’d screamed for him to let her help.

With a heavy heart, Nate knew what choice he had to make.

“I already told you,” he said firmly, “I’ve never seen a mer. Only dolphins.”

Bardan sighed. “Well. We tried the nice way.” He whistled, and Nate heard a commotion behind him.

“Nate! Watch out!”

Cleo’s shout came too late as a net slammed into him with enough force for him to stagger. _Manset_ rolled beneath him, cresting a choppy wave, and he went down in a tangle of scratchy rope. Footsteps thumped on the deck as he struggled to free himself, then the gray glare of the sky was blocked.

Two hunters leaned down, wafting dead fish and stale tobacco, to bind his hands and take his weapons. The second trawler loomed over their shoulders, now level with _Manset_.

Swearing echoed from the wheelhouse. Heart in his throat, Nate jerked up to see two more sailors blocking the wheelhouse door and a third inside lunging at Cleo.

Then one hunter yanked him upright with a grunt. Nate was untangled from the net, bound at the wrists, and dumped unceremoniously on Bardan’s trawler. Nearby, Cleo was spitting and cursing, then she was shoved down beside him.

“The hell are you doing?” Nate demanded. He glared at Bardan, who leaned back against the railing to watch them.

“What do you think we’re going to do?” That yellow smile again. “We’re going to bag ourselves a few mer.”

_Manset_ was rigged to Bardan’s trawler and then the vessels arced north, back to the ruins of Southwest Harbor. Between the roar of the motors and the rush of the blood in his ears, Nate could hardly hear a thing. The gale stung his face with a thousand brittle needles, but he couldn’t close his eyes or look away.

Beside him, Cleo was hunched and silent, leaning into his bulk to shield herself from the worst of the wind. Her mouth was pinched tight, breaths short, but her eyes were clear and glimmering. More than once she glanced to the other trawler, then to the rope that towed _Manset_ behind it.

The crew weren’t paying them any mind, preoccupied with loading the harpoon guns and prepping the nets. Not just any nets, but the steel nets.

Nate could only pray that there were no mer about.

The motors of the trawlers idled, and they halted parallel to each other. Bardan yelled over the gale, and the crew set to work extending the net between the boats. There was an ease to their motions, like a well-oiled machine, that had Nate’s stomach twisting in fresh knots. Cleo squeezed his hand, her nails biting into his skin, and he squeezed back.

“Even without your help, we know a mer hotspot when we see one,” Bardan drawled. “Been watching this bay for days now. They’ve been keeping quiet, but they’re definitely out—”

Something thudded against the hull. The world lurched sideways, the ocean roaring portside, and Nate felt _Challenger_ shudder again under his knees.

Samuel rushed to the stern and cursed. “They got harpoons! They’re trying to sink us!”

“Not before we get them!” Bardan snapped. “Ready the harpoons! Get the nets secured! And you two watch and learn!”

_Challenger_ rocked again, and one of the men securing the steel net between the trawlers yelped as he fell in.

“Man overboard!” Nate yelled.

Bardan bared his teeth. “Leave him! The bastard’s already dead!”

The other trawler fared little better, shuddering from more than the choppy waves as the crew stood steady. At least until a spear impaled a man. He fell into the sea screaming.

Nate’s attention flew back to _Challenger_ as her hull shuddered with several impacts.

“Captain! We’re taking on water!” another sailor yelled, racing up from the lower deck. “They’ve pierced the hull!”

“Then start bailing!” he roared. “We’re not giving up yet!”

Sailors rushed to and fro, almost trampling Nate and Cleo. She scooted as far away from the commotion as she could, and Nate tried to put himself between her and the racing crewmen. Mouth dry, he scanned the surrounding waters, but there was no sign anything was amiss. All the while the hull trembled, rocking the trawler this way and that.

A horn blast shook the air, followed by an answering call from the other boat, and the twin trawlers moved forward as one, the net trailing in the water between them.

“That’ll make ‘em think twice before gettin’ near!” a sailor crowed.

Nate’s breath caught. In his mind’s eye, he saw that nameless mer flopped across _Manset_ ’s deck, tangled in netting, her arms stretching in a plea that was far too late. Then that mer became Kaelysi, bleeding from silver wires that cut into her skin.

He prayed she and the others had the sense to stay away, only for the hull to shudder again. Another scream—this one a scant ten feet away as a crewman staggered, a red-tipped spear blooming from his chest.

And then a hail of spears rained down on the starboard side, striking another two sailors. Nate lunged for Cleo, knocking them both flat on the deck, covering her with his body. Distant yells confirmed that the other trawler faced a similar barrage. Those manning _Challenger_ ’s own harpoon guns aimed at the water and fired.

“Psst!”

Cleo’s boot, resting against Nate’s shin, suddenly tap-tap-tapped against him. He looked up to see a mer peeping over the railing beside them, little more than soaked blonde hair and gray eyes.

“Come on!” Skyleros hissed. “Jump into the—!”

Her gaze snapped over Nate’s shoulder. She pushed away from the railing—but not before a flash of silver spun through the air, and she sank beneath a weighted steel net.

“No!” Nate leaned over the portside railing, but she was gone. Faint ribbons of blood colored the water before they dissipated like smoke.

“Nate!”

He felt Cleo press against him as the trawler listed. Water rose up, ever-closer to washing over the deck, filling his vision as they skidded towards the railing.

“Did you see the size of that one?” one fisherman yelled

And then, as the trawler rocked the other way, something thudded against the hull. Nate felt it more than heard it, the vibration shuddering through his knees like a rumble of thunder—and then it was gone as his feet left the deck.

Cleo swore as the trawler pitched sideways, and the ocean swallowed them both.

Nate plunged into the ice-cold water. He resisted the familiar squeeze as it tried to push the air from his lungs. A rush of white bubbles filled his vision and he struggled, at once weightless and weighted, buffeted by the furious waves.

When the white receded, Nate was left with only murky chaos. Shadows darted this way and that, faster than dolphins, sleeker than sharks, snapping up the bodies in the water. A sailor struggled mere feet away from him, so close he could see the whites of her eyes—and then she was gone, leaving only a trail of bubbles.

Nate struggled and sank.

The water around him seethed. A serpentine tail flashed scant feet away, close enough that he could see it was red. The motion sent Nate spinning as Juliri aimed a speargun at another sailor who had tumbled into the ocean with Nate and—

He couldn’t see Cleo anywhere.

Panic bubbled in his chest. A hot, unbearable pressure screamed for him to swim while his brain screamed to surface. He cast about, flailing, seeking any sign of her among the parade of bodies. No matter how he twisted, the rope around his wrists wouldn’t loosen.

A flash of movement, and he raised his legs to kick at—

Kaelysi.

She may as well have been the wrathful ocean personified: a wild, savage beauty, indomitable in her domain, hair like writhing sea snakes. Her body rendered in blue, silvered by scattered sunbeams that pierced the surface, stripped of color and warmth. Of any humanity. Here, now, it was impossible to believe mer even remotely resembled humans. And her eyes, black and terrible, were fixed on him.

Gray stars flashed across his vision, deepening to spots as dark as her gaze—

Then he was sailing through the water, up, up, to the sweet release of the surface. Water splashed his shoulders and the underside of his chin while the wind ran icy fingers over his scalp. All he could do was drag in breath after breath, the sound rattling in his ears.

Something brushed his wrists and his hands were free.

Twisting, Nate saw Kaelysi just under the surface. A knife flashed silver in her hand.

Treading water, he cast about the foaming rabid maw. _Challenger_ was sinking, with four terrified crewmen clinging to the prow. Bardan himself stood tall, teeth flashing as he snarled, firing into the water as waves licked at his boots. More sailors were swimming for the second trawler, still connected to its sister by a steel umbilical cord. They vanished beneath the waves, one after another. Three blinks and they were gone.

Still no Cleo.

Nate dove, sinking again into the half-realm of blue-toned chaos. Mer wheeled in every direction, snapping up any sailor who still struggled. He sought a human figure, maybe a flash of blonde hair or outstretched fingers. Kaelysi grabbed his hand and pulled him into the deep.

Water rushed by in a nauseating swirl, faster than he could ever swim, and the pressure built in his chest as the ocean grew darker. But there, drifting down into the dark, was Cleo. Kaelysi arrowed towards her, and Nate willed her to go faster until he could reach out—

A sleek shape materialized out of the gloom. Another mer, the biggest Nate had ever seen, careening towards them with death in his eyes.

Kaelysi’s face twisted in a snarl and she lunged. The two mer twisted up, frothing the water, and all Nate could do was grab ahold of Cleo. His boots may as well have been anchors and his clothes molded from lead, but he kicked for the surface with all his strength.

Light filtered from the surface above them, illuminating the grim spectacle in beams of silvery light. Dark bodies floated in a haze of red, limbs outstretched as if beckoning for help. Intestines bloomed from the stomach of one man like a macabre flower. Their killers were swarming around a net somewhere below, and a few broke off to speed towards the hull of the remaining trawler.

Nate and Cleo rose through the silent water. When they broke the surface, she gasped and spluttered, and he fought to keep ahold of her.

“Cleo!”

“Nate,” she wheezed. Her eyes were wild and white-ringed.

The sight was grim. No sign of _Challenger_ anymore, or the captain himself. A roar cut through the air—the motor of the second trawler as it sped away. Only the ocean itself slapped the hull with wave after wave, shouldering it up into the air only for it to drop into a deep green trough. And all the while, the trawler rocked back and forth from more than the waves.

_Manset_ , meanwhile, had drifted away from the killing zone. Fifty feet away, and farther with every tug of the current.

“We need to get out of here,” Cleo cried. “Before they finish us too!”

Barely a dozen feet away, the water roiled as a writhing mass broke the surface. Cleo shoved back, pushing Nate with her, while he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Splashes and frothing water and the twisting lines of a steel net—

A gasp rang out.

Several mer circled the net. Keeping it aloft, Nate realized, as a mer struggled and bled inside it. Skyleros. Red lines cut through her skin, flowing in rivulets to the ocean. Without a word passing between them, another mer broke off to pursue the retreating trawler.

Except Juliri glanced in Nate’s direction. Kamer followed her gaze, then another two Nate didn’t recognize. All of a sudden, the water beneath him felt so very perilous.

Then they all snapped to, their attention fixating once more on the retreating trawler. A harpoon gun fired at the water, spurring them into another white-frothed rage.

“I don’t know what that was,” Cleo breathed, “but we need to get moving.”

Neither of them mentioned how easily _Manset_ , only half the size of a trawler, could be sunk.

Ignoring the commotion behind them, they paddled for _Manset_. The water beneath them was so deep a teal it may as well have been black, and with every kick Nate dreaded the moment his feet would connect with something solid. Imagined cold hands pulling at his ankles. A shudder ran through him, and he fixed his eyes on their only hope.

Splashes and screams ripped through the air. Nate clenched his jaw while Cleo whispered, “Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back…”

They kept ahold of each other, struggling to keep their heads above the surface when their clothes may as well have been lined with lead. But neither of them wanted to look into the carnage below. Every choppy wave slapped their faces, but the stink of brine couldn’t overpower the pungent aroma of engine oil.

At last, _Manset_ was in reach. Grasping at the railing, Nate shoved Cleo in before hauling himself up, where they fell onto the deck in a pile of limbs and seawater. A final shout rose above the wind, and the second trawler sank in the distance.

Then Cleo was shoving at Nate, all urgency. “To the wheelhouse! And stay low to the ground!”

Nate’s boots squelched as he crouched, and his legs ached with oncoming cramps. Still he moved as fast as he could, stomach twisting every time _Manset_ swayed. The wheelhouse door gaped open like an outstretched hand.

They were almost at the door when a feminine voice called, “Nate? Are you there?”

Kaelysi.

He turned to answer, but Cleo grabbed his sleeve. “Nate!” she hissed. “Nate, don’t be stupid!”

Stupid or no, Nate shoved Cleo towards the wheelhouse and carefully peered over the railing. Kaelysi tread water scant feet from the boat, and it struck him for the first time that she was wearing some kind of dark, functional wetsuit with a thick vest.

She’d come prepared for the fight.

All of his horror and rage burst out, eager for a target. “Did you care about me at all or was it just an excuse to kill them?”

Kaelysi pulled back, her eyes widening in surprise. “They netted you!”

“And you killed them all!”

Now she bared her teeth, revealing lines of red between them. “They were going to kill us all—including you!”

Nate looked past her to the carnage on the sea. Most of the killing field was obscured by the waters that already worked to scatter the evidence in its endless gray vault. Unseen, the trawlers sank to their final rest, where the bones of the crew would be soldered by coral into white grave markers. On the surface, an empty life ring bobbed in a lonely splash of orange, while nets and supplies and bodies drifted in all directions. No hint of survivors.

Nate’s stomach roiled.

“Those guys on the second boat,” he choked out, “they were just trying to run…”

Kaelysi’s eyes were cold and flat. “To regroup and hunt us again. Now they won’t.”

An absurd laugh bubbled up in Nate. He could see Bardan with his yellow smile, warning him of mer brutality.

“Nate?” Kaelysi came up to the side of the boat, resting a hand on the railing inches from his own—

“Don’t!” he barked. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She shied back, and Nate forced himself to look past the achingly human confusion in her eyes. “Nate? Are you okay?”

“No, I am not okay!” A sudden rush of fury gave him the strength to stand up, towering over her. “Just— go.”

Kaelysi stared up at him, uncomprehending. “Nate—”

“I said go!” He stabbed a finger at the horizon. “You don’t want to be around humans who’ll hurt you? Take your friends and go already!”

Her expression shifted like the surface of the ocean, from confusion to hurt to something dark and baleful. Then she was gone without a word.

_Manset_ ’s motor rumbled and she took off, angling towards the nearest land. A shake started deep in Nate’s chest, and by the time he made it back to the wheelhouse, he had to clench his hands to keep them from trembling.

Cleo glanced at him, but the censure he expected was absent. Hell, _she_ looked absent. Nate didn’t think he looked much better.

Halting by her side, he leaned heavily against the dashboard. Out the windshield, the Island rose from the gray, ushering them back to land where they belonged.

Nate bowed his head. “You were right. I’m sorry.”

Cleo leaned against his side. “Let’s go home.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to ScorpioSkies for all her help with this chapter!

When the first snowfall blanketed the Island, Nate was glad for the excuse to stay landbound. _Manset_ sat quietly in her boat lift, as ready to ride out winter as the rest of them. It was the time of year he could put his feet up and enjoy the bounty in their storeroom. 

Although Nate didn’t like to think of who they owed that success. Ava wasn’t really talking to him anymore, which meant that the mer were probably gone for good. At least the old crone was easy enough to avoid.

All in all, Nate tried to put the last few months behind him.

But it was hard when he walked down the pier, hearing whispers echo beneath his feet. Or when he stood on the clifftop and couldn’t stop glancing around in case there were a pair of trawlers on the horizon. Or when he scoured the ocean for a flash of color.

Or the time Nate spotted tails splashing in the bay and nearly had a heart attack until he spotted a dorsal fin. Dolphins. Just dolphins playing. He could only run a hand over his face, fighting a groan.

He needed to get away.

Despite the abundance of salted fish, there were other supplies Brooke’s Head needed. In the Prescott house alone, Anders broke the second-to-last plate, they had no nails to fix a leak in the roof, and their blankets were threadbare. Eli was overdue again, and Nate suspected he wasn’t coming back. Not to mention Brooke’s Head’s closest neighbors, the good folks at Cranberry Island, no doubt had their own troubles. Everyone always did.

That meant a trip northwest to the Narrows. As the name implied, it encompassed the skinniest stretch of water between the northwestern tip of the Island and the mainland. If Islandside didn’t have what they needed, then Mainside definitely would. The sister colonies were all that connected the Island to the mainland, for better or worse. 

Nate was more than happy to volunteer. Cleo was down with the flu, but all of his brothers opted to come along. Once _Manset_ was commissioned for the trip, Nate was raring to go.

The day they left was cold and gray. Last night’s storm left the Island blanketed in white while thick-bellied clouds still loomed overhead, promising another flurry of snow. Nate followed the coastline west, then angled north through the polished gray sea.

Leon endured the boat trip with a silent dignity at the starboard railing. Only a bitter wind could shake him from his spot, forcing him to retreat into the wheelhouse, where it was marginally warmer with four bodies in the cramped space.

“Are we going to Islandside or Mainside?” Bobby asked.

“Islandside,” Nate and Anders said as Leon said, “Mainside.”

They all stared at each other.

“No need for Mainside,” Anders said. “Islandside will have everything we need.”

Leon glared back. “Mainside is over twice the size of Islandside, and has all sorts of things we can’t otherwise get ahold of.”

Before Anders could shoot back, Nate jumped in. “We’ll try Islandside first, then Mainside. Okay?”

“Or we could just go to Mainside and save time,” Leon argued.

Nate held back a sigh. “It’s two against one, buddy.” With a quick glare at Anders to keep him quiet, Nate returned his attention to the wheel. They couldn’t reach the Narrows fast enough.

Three-quarters of the way, they passed Rayburn Point. Pre-war, it had been one fancy home, easily twice the size of any other house on the Island—not counting the Dalton estate. Post-war, it belonged to the family of Nate’s buddy Giddon, who lived with his aunt and uncle and cousins. Nate and Giddon had known each other since they were boys, running down the streets of Southwest Harbor whenever Nate’s parents took him to visit. Before the settlement fell.

Nate peered at the pier and noticed that Giddon’s boat, _Blue Turtle_ , was missing. But there was no time to consider more when the wrecks of two pre-war sailboats jutted out of the water, and he had to navigate around them.

Soon enough, Islandside’s overwater village came into view, the patchwork of rafts and docked vessels all tethered to land by thick ropes. Caravans camped nearby on the shore to haggle for new inventory. Amid the chaos of boats and boardwalks and bright colors, the Dockmaster presided over her domain; a fresh arrival from Mainside was unloaded under her watchful gaze. Even if she was a Dalton hireling, it would have been easy to believe she owned the whole place, the way she kept a tight rein over the outpost.

Nate was directed to a mooring, and as he eased along the row of boats, he noticed _Blue Turtle_ docked nearby. Something in his chest lifted at the sight. It had been far too long since he’d seen any friends outside of Brooke’s Head.

Had he really been that distracted by mer?

Nate shook his head to clear it. No more of that.

As soon as he killed the engine, Leon was halfway off the boat. Once they all stood on the pier, Leon pulled out the shopping list to divvy up the caps and tasks. Nate was assigned the repair supplies, and he meandered to the marketplace with his fists in his pockets.

Islandside was, first and foremost, cluttered. Way too many boats, all butting against the boardwalks. Way too many shacks, all packed together like boxes on a rickety wooden shelf. Way too many people, bustling this way and that, their noise rising to the sky where the seagulls screeched and wheeled. A small houseboat even served as a coop for radchickens, who clucked and complained about the cold. Ma wanted to have chickens again, but it would have to wait until spring.

Nate hunched his shoulders against the chaos as he hunted for the first item on his list, a bag of nails. Many of the market stalls were boats, wares lined up in colorful—and distracting—displays, and he picked his way through the crowd with care.

“Nate!”

He looked up just as a burly figure careened into him, grabbing his shoulders. Nate planted his feet and shoved back at Giddon. “Look at you, accosting people on the street.”

Giddon lightly punched his arm. “Long time, no see. How’ve you been?”

Nate hesitated.

There was too much to say, the words crowding in his mouth, falling out of order into a senseless jumble. Bad enough that it sounded crazy; worse, it would put lives at risk if the mer came back for round two.

He could still see _Challenger_ ’s silhouette as it sank.

So no, Nate couldn’t breathe a word of mer, even if he wanted to. Besides, he came here to escape all that, not dredge it up yet again like sediment swirling in turbulent currents to cloud the waters. He could only shove his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Fine.”

A bushy blond eyebrow rose. “And Reeve?”

Nate’s stomach twisted. “We’re, uh, not together anymore.”

“Oh.” A delicate pause. “I’m sorry, bud.”

Nate gave a one-armed shrug. He didn’t particularly want to talk about it.

Giddon frowned at him. “Sounds like you need a drink. C’mon.”

Nate opened his mouth to agree, then hesitated. Ma’s caps felt heavy in his pocket—they were meant to support his entire family. But he was taken aback by just how badly he wanted to say yes.

Surely he could do something for himself while he was here.

“Lunch can’t hurt,” Nate agreed at last.

As soon as they sat down at the bar, aptly named The Pontoon, Nate ordered the largest tankard with his meal. The place consisted of four rickety walls, some tin sheets that barely qualified as a ceiling, and a whole wall of booze behind the counter. Out the windows—or between the cracks in the wall panels—a breeze blew a fine mist through the distant treeline. Another breeze whistled through said cracks in the walls with a sweeter tune than that of the shanty belted out at the bar.

“So, what brought you to this fine settlement?” Giddon asked.

“Same thing as you, I’d wager.”

“You mean booze and bad company?”

Nate rolled his eyes. “Sure. We’ll go with that.”

Giddon grinned over his ale. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your ma.”

Nate made his best haughty sniff. “She wouldn’t believe you anyway. I’m the angelic son.”

Giddon chortled. “And may she continue to believe that’s true, lest she dies of shock.”

Nate raised his tankard in a mocking salute and took a swig.

The day only grew colder as it passed, and not even the humid din of The Pontoon could help. Nate hunkered into his parka to avoid the worst of the cold and damp, waiting for the alcohol to warm him up. After they’d scraped the last sauce off their plates, Nate made his second attempt at finding some much-needed hardware supplies.

Giddon tagged along, of course, offering quiet commentary on the sellers as Nate browsed. “See that vendor over there? The one with the dour face?”

“They all have dour faces,” Nate muttered back, but followed Giddon’s gaze to a scrawny man swaddled in at least three coats.

Giddon smirked. “He looks like a radchicken all fluffed up against the cold.”

Rolling his eyes, Nate stepped up to haggle for three boxes of nails. But Giddon followed him and proceeded to quietly make ‘bwark’ noises--and when the vendor turned away to package up Nate’s purchase, Giddon met Nate’s glare with an easy smile. “What? I was just translating for you.”

Nate had to grab the bag and and run before he burst out laughing. At the next stall, Nate made a valiant effort to completely ignore Giddon, who was ferreting around a pile of timber. 

“Hey, Nate! I found Anders!”

Nate glanced back to see Giddon hefting a plank while the stall owner watched with a narrow-eyed glare. He fought a smirk. “Really?”

“Aww, no love for your little brother?”

Turning away, Nate smacked Giddon’s arm as a voice rose above the crowd. “Step on up for the experience of a lifetime!” 

Nate glanced up, but the source of the voice wasn’t immediately visible. He scanned the nearby stalls, half-expecting to see the Cranberry Island crew selling their tarberry preserves. Or at least Angie searching yet again for a mechanic who could crack the mystery of the farm’s pre-war power generators. But they were probably hunkered down beside their frozen tarberry bog; Lisa and Erick would be playing board games while Angie sat in her big chair by the fire with a pre-war encyclopedia bound in thick if moldy leather.

Ah well. Angie’s crew come down to Brooke’s Head with a crate of the first harvest come spring, as they did every year.

Nate only realized Giddon wasn’t following when someone bumped into him, and he went to shove them back only to discover it was a woman with a murderous glower.

Finding one broad-shouldered man in a crowd of fishermen wasn’t an easy task. Still, Nate scanned for that stupid orange and green beanie Giddon wore—there, weaving towards a throng of onlookers at the end of the street.

“Giddon!” Nate wove through the crowd to catch up.

“Step on up for an unforgettable experience! Learn what’s truly haunting the Island!” The voice belonged to a little man standing on a crate, waving his arms towards the red houseboat bobbing behind him. “A swamp monster from the depths of the bogs, caught the little blighter myself! Come see Kip Callaghan’s House of Oddities!”

Giddon elbowed Nate. “C’mon. Let’s go check it out.”

Nate frowned in the direction of the loud pot-bellied man. “It’s a scam. That mutant will be an albino gulper or something.”

Giddon shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

“You just want me there to hold your hand in case it’s a scary mutant gulper.”

“And here I was offering to hold _your_ hand.” With an easy grin, Giddon made a beeline for the red boat.

Nate paused, then thought, _Ah, what the hell._

Shaking his head, he followed more slowly. They had to fight the living current of people to reach the man, pushed this way and that by irate—and often brawny—shoppers. 

The little man spied them and grinned as he rubbed warmth into his hands. “Aye, here’s a likely one. A man who knows the Island is dangerous and wants to learn just what’s out there! Step on up, friends, and for the low price of ten caps apiece, you can discover the Island’s best-kept secrets! I can promise you’ll never be the same.”

Giddon paid up the sum in a heartbeat, but Nate was slower to part with his caps. Once he handed over the fee, that was half of his caps gone, and he still had a shopping list burning a hole in his pocket.

Kip’s fist closed around the sum of caps, and they were secreted away to a belt pouch. “Thank you, friends. I promise you won’t be disappointed! Step right up to see the mutant of Seal Cove!”

He led them into his houseboat, unbolting the door and pulling aside the curtains with a flourish. The stink of fish and urine wafted out, and Nate fought a grimace. Inside, two oil lamps flickered on the walls—and when the heavy curtains dropped back into place, the waxy yellow light was all that illuminated the windowless room. 

The head of a mirelurk king stared down from the wall with beady black eyes, presiding over a table of mirelurk carapaces in bright, impossible patterns that, in the dim lighting, didn’t look painted. The walls were weighted with carved whale bones, and in one corner, the stuffed corpse of a mutated owl hunched on its branch, watching with glass beads for eyes that seemed to glimmer with movement.

And at the back of the room, behind an effervescent gulper hide stretched across a drying rack, was a small cage. Giddon ambled towards it before Nate could make sense of what he was seeing. An indistinct shape scrambled to the back of the cage.

As Nate stepped closer, he recognized the shape as the downy gray tail of a seal pup, streaked with grime and urine. 

Its upper body was human-shaped.

The mer pup cowered at the back of the cage, curled in on themselves. Their mussel-dark eyes were trained on him. Wide and afraid.

Giddon stopped dead. “The hell is that?”

Nate almost answered, then bit his tongue as fresh horror washed over him. There were no obvious signs of gender, only a few dark spots along the baby’s creamy skin. Nate had to wonder if mer pups chose not to wear clothes, or if Kip thought clothes were too human for a ‘freak’.

“Caught this critter myself,” Kip said from where he leaned beside the doorway. “Me pride and joy. Just look at it.”

At the sound of his voice, the pup quailed and buried their face in their tail, wrapping their arms around their head. Their hair was dark and lank, curling at the ends where it fell around their shoulders. 

“But what is it?” Giddon pressed.

“A mutant,” Kip said. “Coupla folks reckon it’s a mer, but everyone knows those got eel tails.”

Nate made a skeptical noise before he could help himself.

“You ain’t ever seen one,” Kip sneered. “I almost got gutted by one in the swamp. Got the scars to prove it.”

The pup whimpered again.

Unconcerned, Kip ambled up to smack the top of the cage. “None of that now. You gotta look alive for our guests.”

Giddon’s eyes narrowed. “When it outgrows that cage, you’ll be in trouble.”

Kip chuckled. “The _Azalea_ boys were interested in buyin’. I can retire rich, and it’ll be their problem.”

“ _Azalea_?” Nate repeated. “As in the shipwreck?”

“Yup. A clan took up there recently. Or whatever’s left of them after a boating accident. Fancy themselves mer hunters. If they think this thing is a mer—” he shoved a thumb at the cage “—well, I ain’t gonna correct ’em.”

Nate couldn’t speak. In the cage, the mer pup remained curled up, face hidden. Sniffling. 

The air felt colder when he stepped outside. Thick black clouds all but smothered the sky, leaving only a weak band of orange along the horizon. 

Giddon was scowling at the sky. “Kinda wish it had been an albino gulper.”

Nate ran a hand over his face. “Me too.”

“But what the fresh hell was that—”

“Nate!” The wind carried more than the promise of snow—Leon stalking towards him. As soon as Leon was in range, he grabbed Nate’s shoulder. “We’ve been looking for you.” He glanced down, and his expression shifted at the distinct lack of bags Nate carried. “You haven’t bought those repair supplies, have you?”

The shopping list felt rather petty at the moment, all things considered. “I got some of what we needed.”

“And now you’re taking a break after such strenuous work?”

Nate clenched his jaw. “Don’t be an ass, Leon.” Giddon was glancing between them with a concerned look, so Nate cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, catch up with you later, Giddon.”

Leon also nodded in Giddon’s direction before all but dragging Nate down the walkway. “C’mon, man, did you actually waste Ma’s caps on that freakshow?”

Nate stopped dead, pulling Leon to a halt. Grabbing his shoulder, Nate leaned in so his words wouldn’t carry—as long as he managed to keep his voice down when the words burned in his mouth. “It’s a baby mer, Leon! I don’t know how, but he has one and he’s going to sell it to mer hunters!”

Leon’s expression froze. “You’re sure?”

The word felt like a hot coal in his mouth. “Certain.”

Leon ran a hand over his face. “Any idea where the parents are?”

A chilled sweat broke out over Nate’s skin. If the parents knew, they’d have sunk Islandside. Or were preparing to. For a dangerous moment, he was back in the ocean, among the legion of bodies that drifted in the current, while sleek silver-black shapes snapped up any that yet struggled.

All of a sudden, he didn’t trust the water slapping against the raft under his feet.

“I haven’t seen any of them since—” Nate’s voice gave out, and he had to suck in a breath. “I’ll figure something out, okay? But if that pup’s parents find it in a cage, everyone here will die. And if the hunters get their hands on the pup, I don’t even want to know what they’ve planned.”

Leon closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shit.”

—

All four Prescotts spent the remainder of the evening planning, divvying up the last of Ma’s caps between them before they split up with a new shopping list in hand. Except that at seven-thirty, only three of the brothers had gathered at the designated meeting place, just down the docks from Kip’s boat.

“Where is he?” Nate grumbled, shifting on his feet to keep warm. 

Anders shrugged while Bobby hunched his shoulders. Drunken laughter echoed from The Pontoon, the sound filtering through the black depths of the night. Those who hadn’t already holed themselves up in their vessels for the night had retreated to the warmth and light of the bar.

Out on the piers, the only light came from the dim yellow glow of bulb wires strung above the walkways. In the weak light, Nate spied the first flurries of snow, swirling until they were lost in the shadows. 

“We shouldn’t wait much longer,” Bobby whispered, tracking the snowflakes. “When it coats the docks, they’ll see our footprints.” 

Nate clenched his jaw, but it didn’t distract any from his singing nerves. So many ways their little venture could go wrong, and he didn’t know who to fear more: the Dockmaster or the mer. He drew in one breath, then another. “Let’s do it.” 

Anders blew out a gust of air and nodded. Under the dim bulbs, his face had a waxy, sunken cast. “All right. We’ve got this. We can do this.” 

Nate’s nerves tightened as his brother strode down the docks, shoulders tense. The nervous jingle of the caps carried from where Anders shuffled them in his coat pockets. 

Nate ushered Bobby behind a pile of crates when Anders knocked on the door of Kip’s houseboat. A chilly wind rattled across the dock, stealing Anders’ offer of free drinks and company at the bar. Nate didn’t hear Kip’s response, but the thunk of a second pair of boots on the planks was answer enough. 

Anders and Kip’s silhouettes passed, their voices carrying on the wind. “You gotta tell me how you caught it, man!”

“Aye, it’s quite a tale. Nearly lost me eye to that little beggar, if you can believe it.”

“No way!”

When they disappeared from sight, and all Nate could hear was the quiet lap of water below, he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “All right. Let’s move.” 

Even though no one could possibly know what they had planned, the back of Nate’s neck was damp with sweat. Mouth dry, he bowed his head when they passed a round-faced woman tottering back to her mooring. With luck, she was probably drunk. Even if she wasn’t, they were just a pair of harbormen strolling along the dock—or so he had to remind himself.

_Don’t look around. Don’t look around._

They slowed when they reached Kip’s boat. Nate gripped the bolt cutters hidden in his coat, glancing around for any onlookers, but the pier was silent. While Bobby kept a lookout, Nate cut the lock and slipped inside. A low-burning lantern hung by the door, so he took it and brightened the flame.

Without the reassurance of daylight outside, the exhibition space became a half-realm of sinister silhouettes that stalked him across the room. The display of mirelurk carapaces may as well have been a multitude of crabs settled for the night, ready to skitter in all directions if Nate stubbed his toe on the table. And above them, the stuffed owl coiled on its perch, its shape warped by lantern-light until it was a misshapen mass of feathers and shadows, ready to swoop with its monstrous talons outstretched.

Nate lifted the lantern as high as he dared and planted every step with care. The boat swayed gently, but he was alert for the tell-tale thunk of a mer’s spear against the hull. Anticipating it, even. Anticipating his nightmare come to life, water bubbling up from below deck to drown every phantom in this shadowed half-world—

Nate realized he’d stopped in the middle of the room. He shook himself out, but trying to make his legs move was like contorting a marionette with severed strings. Taxidermied heads leered from the walls, their eyes glittering as they tracked Nate’s progress. He silently resolved that wouldn’t be the fate of the pup.

That fresh resolve allowed him to carry on. 

When he peered around the gulper hide, the pup’s cage was missing. Nate spun on his heel, calculating where he misstepped, but it was the place. Lifting the lantern didn’t reveal the wink of metal bars in any corner. But to his left, near the wall, another divider stood crookedly—and beyond it, a stairwell sunk into the black.

Nate descended in silence, the lantern casting a soft ball of yellow-orange light that did more to deepen shadows than alleviate them. At the foot of the stairs, a floor panel creaked beneath his boots. A quiet whimper, followed by a sniffle. 

Ahead of him was what he supposed to be Kip’s living space. The cot lay unmade, piled with blankets and clothes. The sniffling grew louder, and beneath the stench of beer and body odor, Nate caught the faint waft of brine.

He lifted the lantern, but the cage remained well-hidden, even now. So he waited for another whimper—there, near the cot. Crouching, he peered under the bed. Waxy yellow light illuminated the bars of the cage like the teeth of some unnamed monster lurking in the void.

Past the bars, the pup’s eyes glimmered. Another whimper trembled in the air, soft and heartbroken.

“Shh. It’s all right, baby. You’re going to be all right,” Nate whispered, setting the lantern to one side. The pup’s whimpers escalated as he gripped the cage, easing it forward. Their tail slapped the floor as though they were trying to push themselves backwards through the bars. When that didn’t work, they curled up in a tight ball, never making eye contact. 

Nate’s stomach knotted as the pup trembled, their small arms covering their head. With a snap of the bolt cutters, the padlock fell away. He withdrew the woolly shawl Bobby had bought earlier and carefully reached into the cage. 

The mer scrambled away, but there was nowhere for them to go. Their whimpers escalated to a wail.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s going to be okay,” Nate whispered, carefully scooping them up. 

The pup froze at the touch of the shawl. Gently tucking it around them, he lowered their arms to swaddle them. Safer and warmer for them both. He took special care to make sure their tail was covered. They offered no resistance besides another small sniffle, hanging ragdoll limp in his arms.

Then Nate heard a thunk upstairs. The houseboat bobbed as someone jumped aboard. 

He tucked the baby mer inside his parka as quickly as he could and buttoned it up most of the way, supporting them with one hand while the other hand closed around the bolt cutters—

The silence snapped like a piece of driftwood, salt-bleached and brittle. Muffled noises of a struggle. Grunts and thumps. Each sound was a fanged monster, slithering through the darkness to find its prey.

Nate froze, heart thundering. The tussle continued upstairs—then he heard an all-too-familiar _oof_. 

Leon.

He charged for the stairwell—only for Leon to spring down the stairs, his face pale but triumphant. He clutched a furiously wriggling sack that snarled its displeasure. 

Nate’s eyes widened, and he felt the baby squirm against him as though trying to burrow away from them all. “The hell is that?” 

“Baby gulper.” In the lamplight, Leon’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “This way he’ll have something in the cage to show those hunters—and if he comes back blind drunk like we planned, he won’t know the difference! You got the baby mer?” 

Nate nodded. 

“Right. You get out and wait with Bobby. I’ll take care of this.” 

Outside, the snow was falling fast and heavy. Nate’s face stung with icy kisses that melted at a single touch, and he adjusted his beanie. The baby was safely bundled under his parka, and he hunched over so no snowflakes could flutter down the front of his jacket.

Bobby still waited by the crates. His face was pale in the dim light, and Nate sensed more than saw Bobby’s gaze drop to the lump in his parka. They could barely see along the pier ahead of them, but voices drew closer in the gloom, singing off-key. One of them was Anders.

Bobby’s eyes were wide and terrified as he turned to Nate. “What do we do? Where’s Leon?”

Nate clenched his jaw. “Stay calm.” But his stomach twisted itself in knots—Leon was still inside, several sets of footprints in the snow arrowed from Kip’s boat, and the pup was whimpering in his coat. “We have to buy some time. C’mon!” 

Two silhouettes stumbled through the gray-veiled street. Nate moved to intercept the two drunks, heart thundering; Bobby followed a moment later.

“That you, Anders?” Nate called, and the baby jolted in his arms. He glanced down, heart in his throat as they mewled and sniffled in their shawl. He tried to quieten them, but someone stepped into his space. 

Kip, squinted at the gap in Nate’s coat. The pup must have seen him because they squealed in fright.

“Wozzin there?” he frowned, blinking. 

Nate’s mouth was dry, blood roaring in his ears. His mouth opened, but his brain fuzzed with white noise—

Then Anders stepped up and pushed Kip out of the way. “Don’t tell me you brought Rupert out into the snow, Nate! Did you wrap him up in his blankie?” 

Nate’s mouth snapped shut. “Yeah. He’s all wrapped up.” 

“Good!” Anders drew back the lapels of Nate’s coat to peer at the pup. “What were you thinking, bringing him out here? I told you I wanted one night off to hear about that freak and here you are, sneaking out for a drink and taking the baby!” 

“I tried telling them,” a voice called from behind. Leon casually strolled up to them through the snow. “But you know how the little tyke is. Starts crying without you.” 

“Well, with uncles like you, I’m not surprised!” Anders sniffed, turning back to Kip. “Sorry about this. Looks like I gotta get my son home before the wife starts to worry.”

Kip blinked, then flashed them a yellow-toothed grin. “Yeah, well, bar’s closed anyway. You stop on by ‘fore the _Azalea_ boys get here ‘n I’ll let you see the little freak for half price!” 

“You got it!” Anders waved. “Have a good night.” 

As Kip stumbled off towards his houseboat, Leon rested his hands on Bobby and Nate’s backs, propelling them onwards as Anders led the way back to _Manset_. 

“Rupert?” Bobby asked.

“Shut up,” Anders hissed. “I had to think fast.”

Nate clutched the mer pup to his chest. His heart thudded while his ears strained for the faintest shout of alarm. Would Kip notice there was no lock on his houseboat? That the cage under his bed, with a new padlock, held something angrier than a mer pup? 

But all Nate heard were his brothers’ footsteps thunking and the pup whimpering from his coat. He didn’t breathe easy until _Manset_ was pulling away from the docks, carrying four brothers and a baby mer to sea.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to ScorpioSkies for betaing!
> 
> Recommended listening: [Arctic by Sleeping At Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bcSDOhcP2Y)

It was still dark when Leon led the way up the cliffside path to the Prescott house. Nate followed close behind with the baby mer under his jacket. Whenever he turned his head, an unpleasant odor of sweat and something sour wafted out from under his collar. The pup wasn’t squirming anymore, but he didn’t think they were asleep, either. He could only pray the smell wasn’t a sign they’d wet themselves in the blanket.

With the moon hidden behind a curtain of dark clouds, Nate had to rely on memory as he squinted into the gloom, one hand out to catch himself if he slipped. The air remained frigid, promising another flurry of snow, and he flexed his fingers despite the gloves he wore. Only the crunch of snow and gravel behind him reassured him that his brothers were following.

They all tramped up to the back door, the porch creaking under their weight. Leon had his keys out, but the door was barred from the inside.

When Leon rapped on the door, Nate felt the mer pup flinch. While he murmured to them, Leon called, “Ma? Pa? Can you let us in?”

The house creaked in the night, its windows dark and vacant. The breath of the night wind swept along the clifftop, making the shingles shudder, drawing a deeper groan from the depths of the foundations. Each second dragged by, scraping over the snow, as another sea breeze whistled by with an inhuman tune.

One of the windows suddenly glowed with gold, half-blocked by a dark silhouette. The window slid open with a grating squeak, like the death cry of some small creature in the night.

“Boys?” Ma called. “What are you doing back so soon?”

“An emergency,” Leon answered. He glanced back at Nate, his eyes glimmering in the gray half-light.

All of a sudden, Nate realized he had to explain this to his parents. The pup squirmed against his chest as Ma shut the pane and the window darkened, then Nate was left shivering in the dark with an expanse of ocean at his back. Even though he knew he was nowhere near the dropoff, he felt as though he would tip backwards into the sea at any moment.

He hushed the pup, but he didn’t think it helped when they whimpered and turned their head away.

At last, the front door creaked open, Ma waiting on the threshold. Even though it was too dark to really see, Nate sensed the weight of her gaze flit across him as she counted how many sons she had left.

“Hi, Ma,” Anders said. He hefted the bags he carried. “We brought something for you.”

But not nearly enough, Nate knew, as he trudged inside after his brothers. The pup froze in his jacket as he knocked snow off his boots and joined the candlelit half-circle of his family. Pa waited by the stairs, leaning against the railing, and was the first to speak.

“What’s all this about, lads? Surely it can wait until morning?”

All eyes fell on Nate. He clutched the pup in the front of his coat. Maybe it was just the candlelight painting gold lines across Ma’s face, hollowing the pits of her eyes, but it felt like she had noticed the bump in his coat, and the way he held his arms—and the first inkling of suspicion creased her brow.

A thin, reedy breeze whistled through the ceiling, and as Nate unbuttoned his coat, he knew the hole in the ceiling wouldn’t be fixed any time soon. The pup squirmed and mewled in the frigid air, twisting away from all the eyes that landed on them.

Nate coughed. “I, uh, found a baby mer.”

Dead silence. Something on the roof creaked. Outside, a screech echoed from the woods. In the dim light, the air was heavy with the weight of his parents’ disbelief.

Then Pa chuckled once. “That didn’t take long.”

Ma was less sanguine about it, barking, “Nathaniel Prescott!”

“What?” Nate asked, feeling strangely defensive. “It’s got a seal tail, not a dolphin tail!”

Anders smirked. “Been paying close attention to tails, have you?”

If Ma hadn’t been standing there, Nate would have flipped him off. “It’s not that hard, sheesh.”

Inside his jacket, the mer pup squirmed and whimpered.

Ma’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “And what are we going to do with that, hm?”

“This guy had the baby locked in a cage,” Nate protested. “He was going to sell them to another band of mer hunters!”

“And if those hunters come looking for this— this baby? Or its parents come looking for it?” Ma demanded. “You almost _died_ last time, Nate.”

“Your mother’s right,” Pa added, but ruined the effect with a yawn. “We should talk about it in the morning.”

Ma shot him a less-than-impressed look, and Nate pressed his advantage. “You don’t want me to toss a baby off the pier? On a winter’s night?”

Ma ran a hand through her hair, the lamplight streaking the graying ginger strands with gold. Her sigh was almost lost in the late-night air, little more than a brief puff of warmth that soon vanished. “We’ll have to find its parents. But not tonight.”

Nate vanished up the stairs before anyone could disagree with her pronouncement. But then he paused in the hallway, halfway to the black square of his bedroom door, as the full gravity of the situation dawned on him. He was utterly responsible for a baby’s life. Worse, he was responsible for a _mer_ baby’s life. A human baby was impossible enough when he’d never so much as held one before. But not even Ma, mother of four boys, would know how to look after a little larghan.

The pup was still frozen against his chest, and he hefted them in his arms, suddenly paranoid he would drop them.

There were too many hiding places in Nate’s room, so at Ma’s suggestion, he set up a blanket nest in the bathroom. With a single lamp burning by the sink, Nate locked the door and crouched to release the pup. As he unwound the blanket, a waft of stale urine and something worse confirmed that the baby hadn’t been able to control their bladder in their fright.

Lamplight rendered the room in soft gold and blue-gray, and the pup’s form was no more believable in the two-toned glow. They scrabbled across the tiles on their belly, lank lines of hair swinging around their head as they took in their surroundings. Their chubby toddler hands lifted their all-too-human torso off the frigid flooring, while their body shifted seamlessly to a small gray seal tail.

The little thing shivered, and Nate had to wonder if it was from cold or fear.

“It’s okay, little guy,” he murmured, but the pup trembled and dove into the blankets.

Fighting a sigh, Nate extinguished the lantern, wrapped himself in one of Ma’s patchwork quilts, and settled in for a long, uncomfortable night. In the darkness, with only a leaky roof and utter silence from the little life sharing the room with him, Nate had to wonder. As alien as mer were, it was easy to believe they just kind of sprang into existence. But a baby was proof they were as natural as any other creature, as caught in the tides of birth and death as the rest of the Island.

And maybe Nate was starting to understand why mer had so little mercy to spare for humans.

“Where are your parents?” he whispered, more to the ceiling than to the mer totally hidden under the blanket nest.

If the pup was old enough to speak, they didn’t respond. Nate could only pray Kip hadn’t made them an orphan.

Rolling over, Nate tried to ignore the cold hard tile under his back and the soft whimpers from the blankets in the corner.

—

Nate woke bleary-eyed with a throbbing pain in his back. The ceiling above him seemed strange somehow while his bed felt harder than rock, leaving the muscles in his neck stiff and strained.

Then he remembered why.

Stretching gingerly, frigid air attacked him under the edges of the blanket—and he realized a warm bundle pressed against his side. At some point during the night, a quilt had migrated from the nest in the corner, and he could make out the tightly curled shape beneath it.

Nate lifted the blanket a few inches, only for the pup to squeak and yank it down again. He could feel them trembling where they were pressed against his ribs.

“Okay, little guy, it’s okay,” he crooned. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s cold in here, huh, so I shouldn’t have grabbed your blankie.”

The pup curled up tighter until the blanket was pulled taut along their back.

Fighting a sigh, Nate scrubbed at his eyes with a hand. He didn’t feel any more awake for it, so he laid back down and loosely curled around the pup’s blanket, hoping to share some warmth.

Something banged against the door, and the pup squealed with fright.

“Nate! Open up! I really have to go!”

“Gimme a minute!” To the pup, he murmured, “I’m sorry, little guy, but I’ve gotta do this.”

The pup again played dead as he scooped them into his arms, quilt and all, and he nudged the other blankets out of the way with his foot.

Anders waited on the other side of the bathroom door, bouncing on the spot, and bolted inside before the door was fully open. Nate barely stepped over the threshold before the door swung shut behind him, blasting a wave of cold air against his back.

Weak winter light, wan and gray, filtered through the window at the end of the hallway. No warmth to spare, and the family supply of firewood wouldn’t last forever. Nate moved as if in a dream, silent, without resistance from the floorboards he could hardly feel under his feet. The silence felt fragile, glassine, as if one sharp breath would crack the world. And in his arms was an abducted mer pup.

Better yet, he had to find their parents before said parents killed someone. Or killed more people, knowing mer.

Cradling the pup in his arms, he wondered, “What am I going to do with you?”

If they could talk, they chose silence.

Plodding down the steps, Nate followed the waft of scrambled eggs to the kitchen where Ma wielded a spatula while Pa read at the table. Her gaze slid from him to the bundle he carried, and her smile gave way to something more serious. “We’ll need to get breakfast for the little one, too.”

“I don’t know when the pup last ate,” Nate said, “but a little food could go a long way.”

As Ma turned back to the pan of scrambled mirelurk eggs, she asked, “Do you think the little one would like some eggs?”

Nate opened his mouth—and stopped, fighting a sudden panic. “I, uh, have no idea if they cook their food.” He couldn’t imagine them lighting fires under the sea, or hanging around land long enough to cook.

Ma pursed her lips as she thought. “We can try some eggs, and if the little one doesn’t accept it, then you can thaw some fish.”

When she placed a small steaming bowl on the table, Nate felt the mer pup shift on his lap. Dragging the dish closer, he carefully lifted the blanket so the pup could see it.

“That’s for you,” Nate said, nudging the bowl closer still until he could hold the blanket over the bowl like a tent, so the baby had some privacy.

That did the trick. He felt the pup shift again, then heard the scrape of the bowl—then a soft munching. One knot in Nate’s chest unwound.

Anders strolled down the stairs and made a beeline for the scrambled eggs. At least he had the sense to lean against the counter while shoveling his eggs in his mouth, although he probably just wanted to be closer to the pan for seconds.

Eyes on the blanket bundle, Anders chewed thoughtfully. “Any ideas on how to find the tyke’s parents?”

Nate’s shoulders slumped. “None.”

Finding someone on the Island was hard enough. To scour the sea for creatures who could see him long before he would ever notice them—well, it was as plausible as draining all the water from the ocean or touching the moon with his bare hand.

Funny how if he hadn’t told Kaelysi to go, or if she hadn’t respected his demand, things would be different.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t try,” Nate said. He could only hope that Kaelysi—or another mer—would give him a chance to talk. “In the meantime, the pup has to stay with us.” Frowning down at the baby, he said, “You’re going to need a name, little guy.”

“How about Spot?”

“No, Anders.”

“We aren’t keeping this one,” Evelyn said sternly. “Baby will do for the moment.”

Nate considered. “I suppose we don’t know their real name anyway.”

Under the blanket, the baby groaned, burped, and shoved the bowl away. Nate loosened the quilt to check the bowl. It was empty, but Nate’s relief was short-lived when they gagged once, twice, and threw up on the table.

Nate scrambled into action, shoving away from the table as trails of rotten-smelling vomit cascaded over the edge, trying to unwrap the pup from the blanket, even though it was too late to save Ma’s patchwork quilt from the line of fire. Chagrined, Nate held the baby up, leaning them over the table in case they threw up again. “Oh, hell.”

“Babies do that,” Heath said as Ma returned to the table with a washcloth to wipe up the mess.

Nate grimaced. The pup squirmed in his hands, trying to escape all the watching eyes, and whimpered. He didn’t let go but didn’t like having to dig his fingers in, either, in case it made them hurl again. “Does the pup need something else to eat? Do you think the eggs made them sick? Should I grab some fish?”

Pa chuckled once. “Slow down, son. Toddlers have smaller stomachs, and if this one has been starved…” His usual easy humor slid away. “Well, it’ll take time for an appetite to return.”

A sudden wash of anger took Nate by surprise, filling up his chest until it almost felt too tight to breathe. A part of him wanted to hunt down Kip for kidnapping and starving a baby—

But.

But the baby in question was frozen on his lap, having no doubt sensed his sudden tension. They stared up at him with big brown eyes.

Nate sighed and rested a hand on the pup’s back. “If no one else needs the bathroom, I’ll be babysitting in there.”

“Hold on,” Ma said. “Does the little one need water?”

Nate bit back a curse that he hadn’t even considered it.

“Do mer need to drink water when they swim in it all day?” Anders asks.

Worry opened up a pit in Nate’s gut, gnawing at his stomach. “But this one’s been out of the water for who knows how long…”

“Seals won’t die out of the water like fish do,” Pa said.

“No,” Nate agreed, “but we could fill the tub for the baby.”

His family nodded and voiced their agreement—then Anders, bless him, curse him, asked, “Freshwater or saltwater?”

—

In the end, after every Prescott in the house took the time to voice their opinion, the bath was filled with clean, warm water for Baby. With the bathroom door firmly shut, Nate knelt by the tub and unwrapped Baby from the fresh blanket he’d swaddled them in. Streaks of dried vomit stained their mouth and chin, even their chest.

“Here’s a nice warm bath for you,” Nate said.

But as he tried to get ahold of Baby, they dodged around his hands, grabbed the blanket, and shoved themselves underneath it.

“Easy there, Baby,” Nate coaxed. “It’s just water. Don’t you miss swimming?”

The conspicuous lump under the blanket moved away from him, and he wasn’t surprised to see Baby peer out from under the edge. What did surprise him was how fast they were when they darted for the blanket nest in the corner, nothing more than a gray blur.

Nate fought a sigh. “Okay, you don’t want a bath now. That’s okay. It’ll be there whenever you’re ready.”

Slowly, as to not spook Baby, he crawled to the door and leaned back against it with a book while they were again hiding in their blanket nest. The bathroom’s chill never really went away, and even with a cushion, the floor remained hard as an icy rock. Not to mention, the room was stale with the stench of mold and wet fur, but he held still, determined to prove that he could be trusted.

Just when Nate was up to the part where the hero was backstabbed by his first mate, something moved in his peripheral vision. He froze with the page half-turned. Baby peeped out from under a pillow, nothing more than shadowed eyes. When Nate didn’t move, they grew bolder, squeezing out from between two pillows to look around the room. He tried to keep his gaze on his book, lest he scared Baby back into hiding, but he glanced up at the wrong moment, and their eyes met. Baby’s brown eyes were ringed in white, then they vanished back into the nest.

Fighting a sigh, Nate went back to reading. He’d just flipped to the next chapter when he heard fabric rustle.

The blanket nest shuffled an inch closer to the tub. Holding his breath, Nate watched as a lumpy corner of the blanket dragged across the ground. An occasional flash of a little hand or flipper was visible, but Baby kept the quilt over themselves all the way to the side of the tub. Then they sat up to investigate the bath, peering at the water below. All he saw was one little hand curled over the rim, then they were scrambling to scale the tile.

After several moments of struggle, Baby lost their grip and fell, still entangled in the blanket.

Putting his book down, Nate eased across the bathmat. “Want a hand, little guy?”

Baby froze, and he gently scooped them up to deposit them in the water, pulling away the blanket so it wouldn’t get wet. They stared at him with white-ringed eyes that made his gut twist.

“It’s okay,” Nate said. “I know how good a bath can be. Is the water still warm?”

Dipping his fingers into the water, he discovered the temperature had plummeted, but he didn’t think that was why Baby remained frozen. So he gently splashed some water in their direction.

Baby blinked up at him, and he smiled encouragingly. “The water’s a bit cold for me, but you might like—”

They splashed him back.

Nate flinched away from the icy spray with a chuckle. “I have three brothers. Do your worst.” And he flicked water at the baby again, this time splashing water on a vomit mark on their chest.

Baby responded by curling their hand into a fist and squirting water straight into his eye, giggling as he reared back.

“Argh, you got me!” Nate wiped the water off his face, grinning at the sound of laughter. “Not bad, but can you do this?”

Cupping both his hands, he dumped a handful of cold water over their head. They squealed and shook themselves out like a dog, spraying water everywhere. Before Nate realized what he’d started, droplets were flying across the walls, wetting the towels, even hitting the ceiling. Baby twisted in the water—and with a sweep of their tail, sent a tidal wave over the rim of the tub.

—

That night, after Nate cleaned up the puddles and left a warm towel for Baby to roll on, he settled in for another long night on the cold tiles. Extinguishing the lantern, he laid down on his sleeping bag; soon enough, he heard a shuffling nearby, and Baby weaseled under his blanket to curl against his side. This time they didn’t flinch when he rested a hand on their back.

—

Nate woke to the sound of Anders rudely rifling through the medicine cabinet. Something clattered as it dropped onto the bathroom counter, and he shoved his head under his pillow with a moan. A headache was already brewing, and a thin trail of fluid leaked from his nose.

Another clatter as something fell into the sink, then Anders started humming as he brushed his teeth. Something about his tone sounded off, but Nate didn’t care as he lifted the pillow. “Oi!”

The humming stopped at once. It took Nate a few seconds to register what he was seeing. The space in front of the sink was alarmingly empty even as the medicine cabinet gaped open, its contents strewn across the floor. All the while, a little mer sat atop the counter, eyes fixed on him, with a toothbrush still raised to their back.

Nate flopped back down and drew in a deep breath. Then he clambered to his feet, wincing as various aches and pains made themselves known. “How did you get up here?”

One of the towels from the nearby rack was on the floor, the cabinet doors under the sink were open, but the mystery remained. Only Nate had a more pressing concern—namely, that Baby was using Pa’s toothbrush as a back scratcher.

“That’s not what that’s for, I’m afraid.”

Their brown eyes were ringed with white, so Nate gently pulled the toothbrush out of their nerveless grasp. Several seal hairs were caught in the bristles and tooth marks marred the handle. Fighting a sigh, he put it out of reach. Then, seeing the mess of toiletries that the pup had pulled from the cabinet, he reconsidered what would be out of the pup’s grasp.

Nate was not looking forward to informing Pa of his toothbrush’s fate.

“If you wanted something to scratch your back, baby, you could’ve just asked.” Nate rested two fingers on Baby’s back and, when they didn’t flinch away, he gently scratched the spot. Their skin felt downy soft, somewhere between bare skin and fur, and they leaned into his hand with a rapturous expression. Their little tail slapped the counter, sending a box of bobby pins to the floor.

Nate could hardly believe it was real. Just a few days ago, the pup had been locked in a cage, scared out of their mind. Despite the destructive start to the day, a warm feeling washed over him, like when the sun emerged on a mild spring day. He could almost forget the mess he had to clean up.

Almost.

“Okay, you,” he said. “Cleanup then breakfast.”

Nate put Baby back on the floor, and they whined at his feet while he put away all the toiletries they had managed to shove off the shelves. The bobby pin jar now sported hairline fractures and the toothpaste tube was almost empty. He prayed no one would notice. When he scooped Baby into his arms, they burrowed under his jacket against his chest. One of the baby’s tiny hands fisted in his shirt.

Nate was the first one downstairs. The iciest air wallowed on the ground floor, slinking over the floorboards, coating them with its unyielding chill. As he passed the living room, he grabbed a quilt to wrap the pup in and set them on the kitchen counter while he investigated the stove. Once it was burning, he took a minute to bask in the blooming warmth, sniffling as he rubbed his hands together. His nose stung with ice and salt.

Soft blue-gray light filtered through the salt-speckled windows, and the world was quiet but for the complaints of the old house as it creaked and shifted. The ceiling leak was dripping again, but there was nothing to do except put a pot underneath it. Having withstood a nuclear war, the house could take a little cold, just like an Islander.

Nate realized it was too quiet. Whirling around, he sought Baby. The counter was empty, and his stomach plummeted to the frozen floorboards. But then a soft noise dragged his gaze to the kitchen windowsill, where Baby was pressed against the glass, fingers smudging the condensation. Staring into the gloom at the distant promise of dark ocean beyond, like a smear of ink across the glass.

Nate’s heart twisted. “We’ll get you home,” he murmured. “I promise.”

The crackling of the stove behind him reminded him of breakfast. As soon as he stepped towards the icebox, winter’s chill sank into his bones again, and he hurried back with a mirelurk egg and some fish for Baby. He set to thawing the fish then scrambled the egg.

Baby didn’t notice when he brought breakfast over; they flinched when he gently prodded them with the side of the plate. Their expression shifted from displeasure to delight, and they fell on the fish at once. He leaned against the counter with a plate of eggs, but when Baby finished devouring the fish, they waddled up to his side to tug on his sleeve. Their eyes were wide and fixed on his plate.

“No, Baby,” Nate said gently, remembering how they threw up yesterday. “You had yours. This is mine.”

With a whine, Baby’s hands tightened on his sleeve, and they tried to hoist themselves up. Nate swore as his arm dropped and his eggs wobbled dangerously on the plate. The little blighter had far more strength than he’d given them credit for.

He put his back to Baby and said, “No. Mine.”

Another whine, and then he felt little hands getting a grip on his jacket. Then a sudden weight against his back and climbing higher every second.

“Baby—”

“That’s one persistent admirer.”

Nate looked up to see Leon descending the stairs, looking all too amused. Baby clung to Nate’s jacket, wide-eyed, all food forgotten as they stared at Leon. For his part, he made a beeline for the stove to grab a plate of eggs without any concern that he would be beset by an insistent mer pup.

Maybe it was underhanded, but Nate may have taken advantage of Baby’s distraction to gobble up the rest of his breakfast then showed the baby the empty plate. “All gone. See?”

Baby looked between him and the plate with big sad eyes, then leaned forward to lick it.

Leon watched with a smirk, but his eyes were too grim for genuine amusement. “So… we’re mer babysitters now. Ava gets the last laugh, huh?”

“Ava doesn’t know about—” Nate stopped dead. “ _Ava_. She’d know how to contact the mer! Leon, you’re a genius.”

Leon preened. “Well, someone in this family has to be.”

Nate put his plate on the counter to distract Baby, who all but faceplanted on the plate as they set to licking up all the scraps. “Watch the pup for me. I need to talk to Ava.”

Leon froze, his eyes widened. “Me? I don’t—”

But Nate was already striding out of the kitchen, clapping Leon on the shoulder as he passed. “Your problem now, buddy.”

Nate fetched his boots, gloves, and a parka before venturing outside. Last night’s snowfall blanketed the cliffside in layers of white, broken only by tufts of hardy yellow grasses unfurling from the snow. The sea was a wild green with foaming white fingernails, clawing the sand at the urging of a cold wind. Gloomy gray clouds hung low in the sky, silver-bellied and bloated with snow.

Nate picked his way down the cliffside path with care, his boots crunching in the snow. On the beach, the predawn high tide had washed away swathes of snow, leaving a wide gray ribbon of sand. Hunched in his parka, he made the brisk walk to Ava’s lonely shack where it was nestled in the dunes above the high tide mark.

A frigid gust of wind screeched across the bay. Something in Nate froze. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a flash of red on the cliff—Leon, waving his arms and yelling. At the mouth of the path was a little gray shape, bouncing towards the water.

Baby.

Nate ran across the beach, but Baby made it to the shoreline, splashing in the first foam-tipped wave, and in moments, they were gone.

“Baby!” Nate ran into the shallows, the cold sucking at his shins, scanning the opaque water. But all he saw was choppy white waves and the flick of a little gray tail two dozen feet away.

Oh.

Oh no.

“Baby!”

Nate plunged into deeper water, arms outstretched, but he couldn’t see Baby at all. A wave punched him in the chest, knocking him back half a step, the cold constricting his ribs. Already his legs were numb but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t give up or else—

“Nate!” Leon stopped inches away from the tideline, out of the ocean’s reach. When Nate whirled on him, he raised both hands. “I don’t know how they opened the door, I only looked away for a minute, and then they were gone.”

Nate looked between Leon and the sea. “The pup could die out there!”

“Or,” Leon said warily, “find their parents. We don’t know.”

Nate gave him an incredulous look. “In these conditions?”

The wind whipped by in a grating roar, shredding through the weave of Nate’s beanie. Lines of sea froth swirled on the surface like white lace, detailing the dizzying currents below, churning the water until it was cloudy green. Just looking out to sea made Nate’s head ache with cold.

And he knew Baby needed warmth.

Leon squinted into the gale, shuddering, and Nate realized he wasn’t dressed to be outside, with only a jacket, no beanie or gloves.

“Get back inside,” Nate said gruffly. “I’ll talk to Ava.”

“What about you? You’re sopping wet. You need to dry off.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Nate snapped, even if he could feel goosebumps crawling over his skin.

“Well, I guess Ma can’t have two sons dying from exposure,” Leon said as he turned away. But then he paused. “I’m sorry.”

Nate’s stomach twisted, but he muttered, “It’s not over yet.”

With a final glance to the sea, he drew in a shaky breath when he couldn’t see any sign of Baby. Then, heedless that he was dripping water, he bolted for Ava’s shack. Banging on her door, Nate yelled, “Ava! Are you up? We need you, this is urgent!” Nothing. “Ava, please!”

The door swung open, and he almost socked Ava in the face. Cloaked in two patchwork quilts, she glared up at him with rheumy eyes. While she always looked scary, her pinched expression told him in no uncertain terms that she was still furious with him. “What is this racket about, young man? It’s too early in the morning for your excitement.”

Nate grabbed at the doorway—partially to recover his balance, and partially so she wouldn’t slam the door on him. “We found a mer at Islandside—a baby mer! But they just got loose and vanished into the ocean! I don’t know if they’re old enough to find their parents or even survive out there on their own.”

For all that Ava was half-blind, her gaze sharpened on him. “However did you find a pup? Nevermind that, why did you bring the pup back here?”

Nate gritted his teeth against the urge to yell that they had to find said pup _now_. He needed Ava on his side. “Because they’d been kidnapped and I wanted to return them to their parents. Please help.”

Ava’s head cocked as she considered him. Nate could only think of Baby, carried further away by the currents with every second, buffeted by the swell, turned upside down in the clouded water.

At last, Ava gave a crisp nod.

Nate slumped in relief.

She hurried him inside, slamming the door against the cold. “What kind of mer and how old are they?”

“Larghan,” Nate said. He shook out his boots but stayed on the mat, every nerve coiled to spring. “And I don’t know, but they look like a toddler. Can’t talk yet.”

Ava tossed him a towel to dry off, then bustled to the kitchen drawers, grabbing a spoon, gesturing to a spot beside Nate. “Grab that crab pot.”

Glancing around, he found a trio of said pots on the ground beside a shoe rack. Handing one to her, he watched as she rushed to and fro in her tiny shack, stuffing the pot full of an eclectic mix of items: the spoon, a hairbrush, a lighter, even an old necklace with a gold locket.

Nate was almost afraid to question her, but fear for the pup won out. “How is this going to help us get Baby back, exactly?”

“Larghan like to hoard trinkets. This could entice the pup to return if they aren’t too far away.” Ava paused while stuffing a silver hand mirror in the pot, her rheumy eyes distant as she turned the antique over in her gnarled hands. “I haven’t seen any mer since those damned hunters. If there are any about, they will not reveal themselves to me.”

Nate’s stomach twisted at the hurt in her voice. But now wasn’t the time for that particular talk.

When Ava was done, he took the pot from her while she traded her slippers for boots, then offered her an arm as they ventured down the porch steps. The windswept coastline beckoned them, rendered in ribboning lines of green and gray. High above, birds sailed on the roaring winds, their screeches lost in the gale.

Nate helped Ava to the pier, his muscles trembling as he fought the urge to bolt ahead. But she carried the crab pot in gnarled hands that may as well have been a steel trap. He scanned the horizon—and froze. A little head had already appeared in the surf.

He was running before he consciously thought to move. Into the water, foam splashing up his legs. Baby broke through the waves and charged towards him, bawling.

Nate dropped to a knee as they leaped for him, colliding against his chest. Sopping wet and sobbing. Nate ran his hands over them, frantic, searching for any injury. “What’s wrong? What is it? Are you hurt?”

Their skin was smooth and their fur sleek with no gashes or bruises, but they still clung to his jacket and howled, face red and scrunched. Nate shifted, so he was sitting on the sand and wrapped his arms around them, water be damned. Their tiny arms and flippers pressed against his stomach, at once familiar and alien.

He tucked them under his chin and rocked them back and forth, casting about for Ava. She was shuffling towards them with all the speed she could manage; rather than make her crouch down, Nate clambered to his feet, careful not to jostle Baby.

As Ava squinted, Nate said, helpless, “I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

She made a noise low in her throat. Baby hadn’t even noticed she was there, burrowing into Nate’s parka. He winced as a small icy hand pressed against his breastbone. Ava dug through the trinkets in the crab pot, her stiff fingers closing around one item in particular.

Casting the pot aside, she stepped closer, leaning heavily on her cane. The years hadn’t been kind to her, scoring her face with a thousand losses, but her gaze was so soft that Nate felt his throat close up. She gently brushed her knuckles along the pup’s back, crooning under her breath. Baby stiffened against Nate, then whipped around to snap their teeth at Ava—only to stop dead when she unfurled her fingers to reveal the carved bone trinket in her palm.

Nate didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but Baby took it from Ava’s palm. It looked like an amulet of sorts, carved from bone and etched with swirling patterns that Nate couldn’t make sense of. Baby pressed it against their chest, wrapping both arms around it, and sniffled. Their face was still blotchy, but they weren’t crying anymore. Nate watched, breath caught, as Ava smiled sadly.

“I think,” she said, “that the little one misses home.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to ScorpioSkies for betaing!

In days, the bathroom situation was unlivable. Nate had to clear out with Baby in tow whenever anyone else needed the room, while the floor killed his back one stiff muscle at a time. Despite Ava’s renewed efforts, not a single mer coasted by Brooke’s Head.

So one bright if gray morning, Nate introduced Baby to his bedroom. Morning light, muted by the cloud cover, bathed his room in a pale silver glow. His window, set into the leftmost wall, offered a sweeping view of the bay.

Tucked into the far left corner was his bed, layered in comforters, and Nate’s back ached in relief at the sight. To the right sat his dresser and desk, the latter cluttered with a lifetime’s worth of knick-knacks and the pot of a dead plant he’d never gotten around to tossing out. Pa had nailed some shelves into the far wall when Nate was a kid, and they were stacked with comics and books and treasures from his adventures on the sea. A thick rug covered most of the floor space, protecting feet from the cold bite of the floorboards.

Baby’s eyes widened as they took in the room—and their pupils dilated until their irises were almost swallowed by black. Their mouth hung open in a tiny ‘o’.

“Uh, Baby?” Nate asked, gently jostling them. “Are you okay?”

Suddenly restless, Baby squirmed in his arms and cried to be let down. Rather than risk dropping them, Nate lowered them to the rug. They immediately sprang towards his chair, scrabbling up the seat, and then to his desk. He could only watch in fascinated horror as they snatched up an old holotape, several caps, even an old pulp. When they grabbed his heirloom ballpoint pen, Nate raced to the desk.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t touch that—”

Baby hunched over their armful of stolen goods and hissed at him.

“Hey now,” Nate said sternly. “It’s rude to take things that don’t belong to you.” He reached for the ballpoint pen, only for Baby to snap their teeth at his fingers.

He snatched his hand away. “Hey!”

But Baby was already hopping off his desk to waddle for the door. Nate was glad he’d already shut it—until they swerved to his boots beside the door and took one of his socks. He lowered himself to the ground in front of Baby, crossing his legs. This time he mustered all his patience to croon soothing words as he reached for the sock, but they bounced back, knocking over his boots in the process.

Nate could only watch with increasing incredulity as Baby retreated under his bed and, thinking they were hidden, dropped the stolen goods into a small pile. They then weaseled out from under the bed and made a beeline for Nate’s bookcase to swipe an old toy car from the second shelf.

With a sigh, Nate figured he could collect everything later and settled down with one of his comics. But Baby setting up shop gave him an idea.

—

That night, Nate showed Baby the small den he’d set up with a big box and blankets and all the spare cushions he could find. Drawing aside the quilt draped over the entrance, he waved a hand at the dark nook. “See? This is your very own bed. It’s comfy and private. Best of all, it’s all yours.”

Baby looked between him and the den, then poked their head under the bed to check it out. They lifted themselves onto one of the cushions, and Nate settled a blanket over them.

“Goodnight, Baby.” Letting the screen drop, he rose to his feet to extinguish the lamp and settle into his own bed. The bedsprings creaked, then faded to silence as he got comfortable.

A soft rustling under the bed didn’t quite break the quiet, but Nate found himself alert until Baby settled once more. Then he could close his eyes and—

Something scratched his bed frame, followed by a whimper. Nate peered over the edge of the mattress to find Baby stretched as high as they could reach, their hands fisted in his comforter.

Nate heaved himself upright to put Baby to bed again. “I know it’s dark, but your den is comfy.”

This time he covered them in two blankets before returning to his own bed. Scant minutes later, Baby was free again and whining beside his bed. Fighting a groan, Nate rolled away. “You’ve got your own bed, Baby.”

The whimpers increased in volume to full-fledged cries, and Nate felt little hands tug on his comforter. He covered his face with his hands and hoped it would pass.

It didn’t.

Nate wasn’t proud of how quickly he broke, but break he did. Leaning over the side of the bed, he scooped Baby up and lifted the comforter. They immediately curled up beside him, sighing contentedly.

Nate’s own sigh was a little more resigned, but in minutes Baby was sound asleep, and he had some quiet.

—

They fell into a routine, and the days slipped by like pebbles down an icy slope. First thing in the morning, Nate took Baby to the bathroom so they could do their business—if they hadn’t wet the bed during the night, that was. Then he would take Baby downstairs and try to keep them from getting underfoot while someone cooked breakfast. Sometimes his brothers would play with Baby, and sometimes they liked to watch Nate suffer alone. 

When Nate finished his chores, he took Baby down to the beach and let them comb through the detritus that had washed ashore during the night. When their little satchel was full of shells and trash, Nate took them to visit Ava. The days passed by in flurries of snow dancing beneath dark skies.

When Ava couldn’t find any mer herself, she borrowed Rupert’s tape deck to record a holotape for Marcus. Anders and Bobby insisted they could take _Manset_ themselves; Nate suspected it was because they didn’t want to babysit for a whole afternoon. So Nate stood on the pier with Baby in his parka to wave off his brothers.

Baby stopped playing with the zipper long enough to look between Nate and Bobby, who leaned over the railing to wave back. Baby freed one arm from his jacket to lift it, looking to Nate as if for guidance.

“That’s right,” Nate said. “I don’t know how mer do it, but humans wave to each other as a hello or goodbye.” 

He demonstrated another wave, and when Baby moved their hand back and forth, he had to smile.

—

With their message delivered to Marcus, there was nothing to do but wait. The miserable weather kept the family inside. But even with so many pairs of eyes, Baby was disturbingly good at disappearing for an hour or two.

Ma, out of everyone in the family, was the most reticent about their little adoptee. “We shouldn’t get attached,” she would say. “Baby’s real family is no doubt desperate to get them back.”

But Nate suspected an ulterior motive after Baby got into a basket of fresh laundry, rolling around in the neatly-folded clothes and gnawing on all the buttons. Even if Nate had to refold all the clothes to Ma’s exacting standards, he couldn’t pick every seal hair out of their clothes. So the next week was something of an itchy one for his family.

Not long after, Ma misplaced a glove and the book she was currently reading. Somehow they were always short on cutlery, despite Anders and Bobby insisting that they didn’t have any empty dishes languishing in their rooms. Pa’s holotape collection slowly vanished.

Nate only realized that these were not coincidences when he woke up one morning to find he was missing one sock from every pair he owned.

Sure enough, he checked Baby’s nest under his bed to discover an impressive hoard that included a packet of Leon’s cigarettes, three scarves, one of Pa’s boots that was filled with pencils and cutlery, a set of house keys. Worst of all, Ma’s favorite pearl necklace had a place of honor at the top of the pile.

Nate buried his face in his hands with a groan. Ma was going to kill him.

On top of the hoarding, Baby loved mealtimes. With an uncanny sense of smell—or at least Nate figured it was smell—they knew whenever someone was cooking and raced down the stairs, flippers smacking on every step, to haunt the kitchen like a little gray blob of a ghost. Sometimes they could be distracted with a shiny spoon, which they would protect with all their strength—and if anyone tried to take it back too many times, they would gallop away to hide it somewhere.

But once they learned to push a chair from the table to the counter and hop up, it was game over.

“C’mon, Baby,” Nate cajoled, leaning over the counter to block Baby from reaching the stove—and the pile of ingredients Ma had set out beside her. “The food will be nicer if you wait.”

Baby stared up at him, their big eyes liquid dark and shining in the lamplight. Their bottom lip quivered.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Nate scooped Baby up and put them on the floor, which gave him about thirty seconds to lean back against the counter on his elbows before Baby was up on the countertop again, tugging on his sleeve.

“Nope,” Nate said. “Sorry. You gotta wait like the rest of us.”

In the living room, Anders and Leon decided to set up a card game. Anders swiped the deck out of Leon’s hands to shuffle the cards.

Leon made a noise of offense. “You don’t cut the deck like that—”

“Hey!” Ma barked.

Nate jumped. He to discover Baby had made it around him and snatched one of the mirelurk eggs, curling themselves around it.

Ma’s stern gaze slid to Nate.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll, uh, grab another egg from the icebox, yeah?”

At least Baby was distracted gnawing on the thick shell, so Nate could make a break for it and get back before they caused any more trouble. After giving Ma the replacement egg, he picked Baby up, egg and all, and dumped them on the kitchen table. They were happy to roll around with their egg, leaving Ma free to cook.

In the living room, Leon was glowering over his cards while Anders preened. Stabbing a finger across the table, Leon growled, “You’re cheating, you ass! I know for a fact that you’re not this good.”

Nate snickered. “Just because you have to cheat to win—”

There was a loud splat behind him, followed by a giggle.

Nate turned around to see the egg smashed on the floor, shell scattered across all corners of the kitchen, yolk and egg white splattered everywhere. And Baby, looking very pleased, hopped from a chair to the ground to shovel handfuls of yolk into their mouth.

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose and fought a sigh.

—

After the discovery that Baby understood how gravity worked, Nate figured he’d seen everything the little terror was capable of. A few days later, Baby proved him wrong. 

Another night, another dinner. Nate had learned his lesson after picking up eggshells from all corners of the kitchen and improved at keeping Baby away from any food prep. Since feeding them on the floor felt wrong, but letting Baby eat on the table was just asking for trouble, they ate on the kitchen counter.

It was Nate’s turn to clean up, so he filled the sink with warm soapy water and set to scrubbing. Baby scampered up to his elbow to peer into the steaming tub.

“You should take some take some leftovers to Cleo,” Ma said. “She’s still sick, isn’t she?”

Nate glanced Ma’s way. “Yeah, she’s—”

He felt rather than heard the splash. Hot soapy water splattered against his chest and arms, even reaching the underside of his chin.

Baby sat in the sink, surrounded by suds, and grinned up at him.

“Baby, no—”

Before he could grab them, they sank beneath the gray surface to squirm between the pots and plates. Nate pulled them up, only to discover they were chewing something.

He groaned. “What have you got? What are you eating?” 

Baby only chewed faster and cried out in displeasure when he tried to force their mouth open to discover the soapy food scraps they’d scavenged.

Nate hoisted them out of the sink and onto the counter, which only succeeded in making a soapy puddle as Baby squawked and squirmed. They were hard to hold at the best of times, but with soap in their fur, they slithered from his grasp to plunge back into the sink.

In the background, his brothers were laughing.

—

After the egg debacle, Nate kept the bathtub full for Baby to splash around and bathe themselves. The water had to be changed regularly as sand accumulated at the bottom and cords of collected seaweed were strung over the side of the tub. Nate could only throw out the detritus when Baby was distracted; otherwise, they threw a tantrum, flopping onto the floor and refusing to move for hours.

And in all the weeks that passed, there wasn’t a whisper of a mer. When Nate could get someone to look after Baby, he again pulled _Manset_ out of her winter hibernation to check in with Marcus and scour the waters. Useless, maybe, but he itched to do _something_ to help.

Of course, that meant wrangling someone to babysit. Anders wasn’t a great choice to mind a toothbrush, let alone a toddler, while Leon tended to look away at the wrong moment and lose track of Baby. Ma and Pa were busy, which left Bobby to be volunteered.

It also meant leaving Baby behind, and they didn’t much like that. Baby followed Nate down to the front door, and as soon as Nate placed them in Bobby’s arms, they squirmed their way free to sit on Nate’s boots. Twice.

“You need to hold them, Bobby,” Nate said, exasperated. “Put some muscle into it.”

“I am,” Bobby replied, trying to find a way to balance Baby on his hip. “They’re too slippery and squirmy.”

From the living room, Ma sighed. “Give Baby something to eat and don’t make a fuss about leaving. That only makes them more anxious.”

Having successfully raised four boys, Nate and Bobby heeded her advice. Nate at least made it out the door before a cry rang out from inside. Nate hesitated at the sound, but Ma appeared in the kitchen window to shoo him on, so he tried not to feel too guilty as he made his way down the icy gravel path.

Marcus hadn’t seen any mer and wasn’t pleased to be pestered. Frustrated, Nate stayed out until after sundown, spurred by a need to find something. Anything. But there were only black waters and the last glow of light along the horizon. Nate sailed home, shivering, feeling small and alone.

When he stepped through the front door, the house was quiet under its snow coating. Bobby was nowhere to be seen; Nate was ready to race up the stairs to find Baby when he noticed Ma knitting by the fireplace.

“Any luck, dear?” she asked.

“None. It’s like all the mer have just vanished.” As Nate ambled over to kiss Ma’s cheek, he noticed two things. One, that she was knitting a remarkably small sweater. Two, that Baby was draped across her lap, fast asleep.

At his raised eyebrow, Ma sighed. She rested one hand on Baby’s back. “We have to find the little one’s parents. They must be frantic.”

Nate perched on the armrest beside Ma and pulled her sideways into a hug. “I know. But until then, Baby has us. After all, they must be a part of the family if they’ve got a sweater.”

“Yes, well.” Clearing her throat, Ma gently elbowed him in the ribs. “Go clean up. There are leftovers on the stove for you.”

Nate stood up to hide his smile. “Thanks, Ma.”


End file.
